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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/puttingonimmorta00maca_0 






“ 
Putting on Immortal! 


SUL UBICAL SENN 
Reflections on the Life Beyond 


By y 
CLARENCE EDWARD MACARTNEY 


Minister of Arch Street Presbyterian Church 
Philadelphia 


%) 
¥ 





New Yorxk CHICAGO 
Fleming H. Revell Company 
LONDON AND 


EDINBURGH 


Copyright, MCMXXVI, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


To 
FATHER and MOTHER 
Now Within The Veil 


ty ras ala de 
re # Dery 
A Rata, 


i fy vy), 





Introduction 


T can hardly be questioned that the tide of 
interest in the life to come has rapidly ebbed 
in our generation. Save for a somewhat un- 
healthy revival of spiritualism, there has been little 
discussion or teaching about the great change which 
_ awaits us all. It used to be the fashion of the foes 
of the Church to rebuke her as being too other- 
worldly in her thought and teaching, and not 
enough interested in the life which now is. Cer- 
tainly no one could lay such a charge against the 
Church of our day. The whole emphasis, in the 
pulpit, and out of it, has been put upon the Here, 
and the Hereafter has faded immeasurably. 
This subsidence of interest in the life to come 
has undoubtedly had its influence in the present 
low spiritual condition of the Church and in the 


sag in public morality. There is a tonic in the ~~ 


wind which blows off the shores of the life to 
come, and both Church and State sorely need to 
feel its awakening and life-giving breath. In his | 
“ History of the People of Israel,’\Renan pays a __ 
noble tribute to the part which faith in the life to © 
come plays in the affairs of the life which now is. 


He says, “ Let us not deceive ourselves; man is 
rf 


8 INTRODUCTION 


governed by nothing but his conception of the 
future. Any nation which en masse gives up all 
faith in what lies beyond the grave will become 
utterly degraded. An individual may do great 
things, and yet not believe in immortality ; but those 
around him must believe it, for him and for them- 
selves.” \ 

No one has traversed the whole territory of 
Christian truth till he has climbed those high ranges 
of revelation, whence he can command a view of 
the life everlasting. True, it is a far distant view, 
and much cloud and mist obscure the outlines of 
the eternal shores. Nevertheless, there are some 
things about the life to come which the Word of 
God makes clear to us. If we see as in a glass, 
darkly, that is no reason why we should refuse to 
look at all. A Scriptural interest and hope in life 
hereafter exerts a purifying influence upon our 
characters in the life of this world. The Apostle 
speaks of the “ powers of the world to come.” It 
will give us strength for the battle of to-day and 
hope for the unknown things of to-morrow if, 
through the Scriptures, we come in contact with the 
“ powers of the world to come.” 


C. E. M. 
Philadelphia. | 


Contents 


ie 
% Wuat Att Men Feex 2 a aR 
Il. 
PAGAN IDEAS - = - 3 3 
ITI. 
Op TESTAMENT IDEAS “ s S 
IV. 
Can WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? - 
Ve 
%, THE RESURRECTION OF THE Bopy - 
VI. 
%, THe RESURRECTION OF THE Unjust - 
| VII. 
BETWEEN DEATH AND THE RESURRECTION 
VIII. 
Tue Last JUDGMENT - p i s 
IX. 
FUTURE RETRIBUTION - - - ~ 
X. 
Bet Last - a = i EL nttne 


II 
29 
47 
69 
89 
105 
Rt? 
127 


145 


169 





I 
WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 


“Vital spark of heavenly flame! 
Quit, oh, quit this mortal frame! 
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying! 
Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying! 
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife, 
And let me languish into hfe! 


“ Hark! they whisper—angels say, 

‘ Sister spirit, come away!’ 
What is this absorbs me quite; 
Steals my senses, shuts my sight; 
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? 
Tell me, my soul, can this be—death? 


“The world recedes! It disappears! 
Heaven opens to my eyes!—my ears 
With sounds seraphic ring: 
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! 
O Grave! where is thy victory? 
O Death! where is thy sting?” 


Pore’s Translation of Latin Ode. 


I 
WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 


N a bright July day twelve years ago, I 
() was resting at a post-house on a journey 
across the mountains of Norway. ‘The 
village was but a cluster of cottages, and most of 
the inhabitants were standing about the door of one 
of the cottages. Presently, men came out of the ~ 
house carrying a rude coffin. It was laid on the 
flat bed of a low wagon, and the procession started 
for the place of burial. Down the steep hill rum- 
bled the wagon, followed by the company of 
mourners and neighbours. At the foot of the hill 
they took a road to the left which led them through 
the fields which were sweet with the new-mown 
hay. After a moment’s pause at the gate of the 
churchyard, they passed through and came to a 
stop before the door of the white Lutheran Church. 
The body was carried into the church, the men 
and women and children filing in after it. In the 
space of half an hour they came out again into 
the clear sunlight and gathered about the open 
grave, 
For a little time there was quiet and silence, 


like that which brooded over the Sabbath fields 
13 


14 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


of hay and the deep fiord, across whose placid face 
lay the shadow of the mountains and silver cas- 
cades. ‘Then the company broke up and went their 
several ways, each waiting his time, until for him, 
too, the little episode of life would be over, and he 
would take the same journey, down the hill, 
through the meadow, into the church, and then to 
the grave, while the bell in the tower tolled a sad, 
yet sweetly sounding, requiem. 

As I saw them come slowly up the hill again, I 
thought of the question that was in my own mind, 
and in the minds of those honest, hard-working, 
yet life-loving peasants, a question to which their 
noble mountains and peaceful fields and deep mys- 
terious fiords could give no answer, “ If a man die, 
shall he live again? ” | 

One question, more than all others, 

From thoughtful minds implores reply, 


It 1s, as breathed from star and pall, 
What fate awaits us when we die? 


It would betray a want of true humanity even 
to pretend to be indifferent to this question of life 
after death. In spite of all the rhetorical garlands 
which we strew over the grave, the human mind 
recognizes death as the great foe to life. Pro- 
fessor Seeley, in his Ecce Homo, tells the truth 
when he says, “‘ Death remains the fatal bar to all 
complete satisfaction, the disturber of all great 


WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 15 


plans, the Nemesis of all great happiness, the stand- 
ing dire discouragement of human nature.” The 
old question raised by Job, “If a man die, shall 
he live again? ” loses nothing of its fascination for 
the human mind as the ages roll by. Onthe tomb 
of Thomas Huxley, the great agnostic, are these 
lines: 





“ And if there be no meeting past the grave, 
Tf all is silence, darkness, yet ’tis rest. 
Be not afraid ye waiting hearts that weep, 
For God still giveth His beloved sleep; 
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.” 


But the heart of humanity has never acquiesced 
in that view of death. If there be no meeting past 
the grave, and if its sleep is an endless sleep, then 
a final and overwhelming calamity awaits us all. 
To speak of God giving His beloved sleep, and 
that sleep an endless sleep, is a contradiction in 
terms. Mankind has ever taken the view that if 
there be a God, and if God be good, then He will 
*“show wonders to the dead.” Yet this subject 
of life hereafter, majestic though it be, ever al- 
luring us, is one that ever baffles us. When we 
stand by the still form of the beloved dead, or, on 
a spring day, pause by the grave of our parents, 
and long to break the silence of death and the 
grave and hold but a moment’s converse with the 
dead, we realize how true it is that we see through 


16 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


the glass darkly and know in part; and kneeling be- — 


fore the veil that screens the Beyond we weep in 
silence. 

Yet our grief and our perplexity do not make 
us despair of the life hereafter. On the contrary, 
they do but serve to increase our interest in it and 
awaken in our minds and hearts those reasons and 
intimations of immortality which from the be- 
ginning of time and death have brought comfort 
to mankind. Man lives in a vast cemetery. His 
world is a world of dead empires, dead civiliza- 
tions, dead cities, dead vegetation, dead animals, 


dead races, and dead contemporaries. Yet in spite © 


ofthe fact that the world in which he lives seems 
to mock at his creed of life hereafter, man has 
steadfastly clung to such a belief and warms his 
heart with this hope. But with the odds, appar- 
ently, so overwhelmingly against him, man has cast 
about him for reasons and intimations with which 
to fortify himself in this citadel of his faith in 
life to come. ‘These reasons and intimations are 
not the source of his hope and belief, but they are 
the grounds upon which man seeks to rest those 
hopes. Believing that he will live again after 
death, man seeks to justify that belief in the court 
of reason. Of some of these reasons let us now 
speak. 

From the standpoint of reason one of the strong- 


WHAT ALL MEN FEEL Ly 


est proofs of the existence of God is the fact that 
man has in his mind the idea of God. How, if 
there is no God, could he have the idea of God? 
The same argument holds good when we come 
to the doctrine of immortality. In spite of the 
trophies of death all about him, and in spite of the 
certain death which awaits him, man undoubtedly 
has the conception of life after death. But if man 
is a creature destined to come to nothingness in 
the grave, how could he have this idea of life after 
death? The very fact, then, that man in all ages 
has had the instinct of life after death is in itself 
a thing of tremendous importance. Haeckel, the 
prophet of materialism, writes that no man who 
keeps a good dog can deny that the dog has just 
as good a claim for immortality as man himself. 
As one who has kept several good dogs, I deny 
that this is so. The death of a dog does not sug- 
gest the subject of immortality, but the death of a 
man does. The reason is that a dog in no way 
expresses any instinct for life after death, whereas 
man does express such instinct. 

The plan of the Creator in His world is to sup- 
_ ply a suitable organ wherever He implants the 
instinct. ‘The bee has the instinct to secrete honey, 
and honey and wax are provided. The bird has 
the instinct to fly, and the wing with which to fly. 
The fish has the instinct to swim, and the fin with 


18 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


which to swim. ‘The ear is made for hearing and 
the eye for seeing. Are we to think that this great 
plan of God breaks down only when we come to 
the highest creature and the highest instinct of 
that creature, which is life after death? How deep 
and universal and ancient that instinct for im- 
mortality is, may be seen from all those processes 
in nature which have been appealed to by man as 
processes which are similar to a life coming out 
of death. 

This is often spoken of as the argument from 
analogy. Man saw the beetle emerge from his 
filthy bed of corruption, and in his temples he hung 
up the golden scarabeeus as the symbol of life to 
come. He saw the butterfly come out in radiant 
glory from her dark bed, and on his tomb he carved 
the butterfly as a symbol of the resurrection. 
When the ice and the snow began to melt, and the 
south winds began to blow softly, and Spring blew 
her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, man saw the 
dead branches bud and put forth new leaves, and 
in the great change of the springtime he saw the 
sure token of the revirescence of man after death. 
In a hundred different forms man has liked to 
repeat the myth of the phoenix, how that fabled 
bird after subsisting for five hundred years, loads 
his wings with spices, and flying to the temple is 
burned to ashes upon the altar, and out of the ashes 


WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 19 


there emerges the new bird which salutes the priest 
and flies away. ‘Therefore, in his temples, man 
set up the phoenix as the symbol of life everlasting. 
These analogies, of course, prove nothing; for the 
beetle, the butterfly, and the tree only sEEM to be 
_ dead; yet the appeal of man to these processes in 
“nature show how deep is his instinct for im- 
mortality. 

Man’s instinct for immortality and his apprecia- 
tion of his own moral dignity are closely related. 
It is because he takes such high views of himself 
that man cannot think of the grave as his final 
destiny. ‘What a piece of work is man! how 
noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form 
and moving how express and admirable! in action 
how like an angel! in apprehension how like a 
god!” Able to take such a view of himself as is 
expressed in those words of Hamlet, or thinking 
of himself as the Psalmist did, “a little lower than 
the angels,” how could man acquiesce in death as 
his end? Ina noble passage Chateaubriand con- 
trasts man with the beast of the field and pays 
tribute to man’s instinct for the hereafter: “ Why 
does not the ox as I do? It can lie down upon 
the grass, raise its head toward the heaven, and in 
its lowing call upon that unknown Being who fills 
the immensity of space. But, no; content with the 
turf on which it tramples, it interrogates not those 


20 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


suns in the firmament above, which are the grand 
evidences of God. Animals are not troubled with 
those hopes which fill the heart of man; the spot 
on which they tread yields them all the happiness 
of which they are susceptible; a little grass satisfies 
the sheep; a little blood gluts the tiger. The only 
creature that looks beyond himself and is not all 
in all to himself, is man.” 

Thus it is that in any marshalling of the reasons 
which support man’s faith in immortality the first 
place must always be given to man’s universal in- 
stinct for immortality. The Preacher of Ecclesi- 
astes is thought to have struck this note when he 
said of man, “ He hath made everything beautiful 
in its time; also he hath set eternity in their heart.” 
Man and the thought of immortality are insep- 
arable. 


“ Here sits he, shaping wings to fly: 
His heart forebodes a mystery; 
He names the name Eternity.” 


In the mind of man faith in God and faith in 
right are linked together. ‘‘ Shall not the judge 
of all the earth do right?” is the granite platform 
upon which rests the structure of man’s hope. 
Man is a moral being. ‘This means that he dis- 
tinguishes between right and wrong, and that his 
conscience within him is the oracle of God. In 


; 


WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 21 


the government of God, then, virtue must be re- 
warded and vice must be punished. A splendid 
example of how firmly this idea that God will 
punish evil and reward good is implanted in the 
breast of man, is afforded us in St. Luke’s account 
of the shipwreck of St. Paul on the coast of Malta. 


When the viper came out of the faggots which 


Paul had gathered for the fire and fastened itself 
upon his arm, the barbarians said one to another, 
“No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though 
he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth 
not to live.’ The barbarians made a deity of Jus- 
tice and held firmly to the faith that no wrong-doer 
could escape punishment. 

This world, however, affords no full vindication 
of justice and right. We know from our own 
conscience and from the occasional visible mani- 
festations of the judgments of God and man that 
the world is governed in righteousness. But cer- 
tainly time, this life, cannot be the only field for 
the working of the laws of righteousness and jus- 
tice, for there is a great deal of evil that goes un- 
checked and unpunished. This was the great prob- 


» lem with which the Old Testament saint wrestled. 


. He saw the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer 


oppression. It would not have vexed him so much 
had he possessed the knowledge of the future that 
came with Christ; but with his imperfect thought 


22 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


of the future it did constitute a very great problem, 
provided he held to his faith in the power and the 
goodness of God. If we look at life without our 
Christian hope of life hereafter, the same problem 
will vex us to-day. If this world is the only 


theatre for the display of God’s laws, then verily — 


His ways are not equal. We have our laws and 
maintain the right, and endeavour to punish evil; 
but there is a vast amount of evil that goes un- 
punished. Some men are punished here for their 
sins, in a preparatory degree, at least. But there 
are many others whose “eyes stand out with fat- 
ness,” and who experience neither the compunc- 
tions of conscience nor the judgments of men. 
There are so many crooked ways that ought to be 
made straight; so much pushing aside of the weak 
and trampling down of the meek; so frequent a 
miscarriage of justice among men, for 


“Tn the corrupted currents of this world 
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, 
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize tiself 
Buys out the law.” 


If death is the common end of all men, then such 
a terminus to life throws into confusion man’s 
moral ideas, for it shocks him to believe that Elijah 
and Jezebel, John the Baptist and Herodias, Paul 
and Nero, share at death exactly the same fate, 


WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 23 


and that fate annihilation. It is true that many of 
the prefigurations on the part of man of the re- 
wards and punishments of the life to come, are 
gross and revolting in the extreme; yet they bear 
testimony to the grip that the sense of right and 
wrong has on man’s mind, and to the conviction 
in man’s mind that for the full display of righteous- 
ness and judgment there must be a life after death. 

To the eye of man there is much that is partial 
and incomplete in life. There is nothing here to 
indicate that man’s life on earth is one of God’s 
finished chapters. “The incompleteness of life 
strikes one when one thinks of the great number 
who never found their place or niche in this world. 

When one reads the answer of the unemployed 
in the parable of the vineyard and the labourers, 
“No man hath hired us,” one hears in it the sad 
refrain of the unappreciated, the disappointed, the 
broken, the unnoticed, all that vast throng whom 
life has never summoned into its vineyard. As the 
Master called these men at the eleventh hour to go 
into the vineyard, will not the hereafter provide a 
vineyard into which men shall be summoned, and 
where not only those who toiled faithfully and 
successfully in life shall perform higher labours, 
but also those who had to stand by and watch 
others work and succeed shall find employment 
suited to their talent and desires? ‘There the hands 


24 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


that might have “ swayed the rod of empire ” shall 
hold the rod of opportunity and high service; there 
the hands that might have “ waked to ecstasy the 
living lyre”’ shall find lyres which they can strike 
and harmonies which they can awaken; if knowl- 
edge in this life never “ unrolled her ample page ” 
before their eyes, there they shall know the truth 
and increase in knowledge; and if life’s poverty 
and “ chill penury ” repressed their noble rage and 
froze the genial current of the soul in this life, 
hereafter His servants shall serve Him, and there 
shall be no discrepancy between opportunity and 
capacity, the labourer and his vineyard. 

If the thought of a life after death seems to be 
necessary when we think of the beaten and baffled, 
those who never found their place or had their 
chance, it is not less necessary when we go to the 
other extreme and think of those who have been 
most richly endowed with talents, to whom life has 
opened splendid fields of labour and who have made 
through a long life the most of their gifts and of 
the opportunity for the display of those gifts. 
Death never comes with a greater shock than when 
it comes to put an end to the life of a gifted per- 
sonality who has laboured long and with distinction 
in this world. It shocks us to think that such 
powers are suddenly and forever quenched in the 
gloom and silence of the grave. Much as the man 


WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 25 


has accomplished, it is but the faint token and 
prophecy of what he might have accomplished had 
his life gone on developing and increasing in wis- 
dom and grace. In the words of Principal Caird, 
“ Man’s intellectual and moral endowments are on 
a scale immeasurably larger than the needs of this 


present life, or than is required for any attainment 


in knowledge or goodness, which even the noblest 
and best of men reach in their earthly existence; 
and therefore we can only account for the dispro- 
portion by the conception of a future life in which 
these endowments shall find adequate scope and 
employment.” 

Unless there is a future life, then man is the 
only creature with desires for the gratification of 
which he has neither power nor opportunity. On 
his seventieth birthday Victor Hugo wrote, ‘‘ Win- 
ter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. 
The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear 
around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds 
which invite me. For half a century I have been 
writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, 
philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, 
song,—I have tried all. But I feel that I have 
not said the thousandth part of what is in me.” 
Life’s incompleteness, then, is an intimation of life 
tocome. In the striking sentence of Thomas Chal- 
mers, “Man feels an interminable longing after 


26 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


noble and higher things, which nought but im- 
mortality and the greatness of immortality can 
satiate.” 

The heart hath reasons of its own, said Pascal, 
of which the mind knows nothing. No survey of 
the intimations of immortality would be complete — 
which did not pay tribute to this reason of the 
heart. Every heart which has loved and _ lost 
knows what this reason is. The Gospels tell us 
that after the disciples had inspected the empty 
sepulchre they went away again unto their own 
home, “ But Mary stood without the sepulchre, 
weeping.”’ And there, at the sepulchre, through 
all the ages since death first came into the world, 
Mary, symbol of grief, has stood weeping, and 
refusing to be comforted. So love weeps for 
friends separated from it by death and finds no 
real ray of comfort, save the hope of meeting 
again on some farther shore. It may be that it is 
better to have loved and lost than never to have 
loved at all. But that “better” is far from best. 
Recollection of the hours spent in sweet counsel © 
with the dead, and the remembrance of his noble 
character, have their temporary consolation; but 
they cannot fill the aching void, indeed, they only 
serve to emphasize the change which has taken 
place, and send the mourning heart empty away. 
There is but one thought that comforts the heart, 


WHAT ALL MEN FEEL 27 


and that is the thought of seeing again in the glori- 
ous morning of another life those faces which we 
have loved long since and lost a while. The lines 
of Scott’s son-in-law, Lockhart, express the “ ear- 
nest expectation of the creature ” when he looks at 
life through the eyes of love: 


“Tt 1s an old belief 
That on some solemn shore, 
Beyond the sphere of grief, 
Dear friends shall meet once more. 


“ Beyond the sphere of time, 
And sin, and fate’s control, 
Serene in changeless prime 
Of body and of soul. 


“That creed I fain would keep, 
This hope P'll not forego; 
Eternal be the sleep, 

If not to waken so.” 


These, then, are four of the chief reasons and 
arguments with which man has sought to fortify 
himself in the citadel of his faith in life beyond 
the grave. They are sufficient to show that the 
belief in immortality is a reasonable one. ‘There 
are the best of rational grounds for believing that 
man lives after death. But helpful as these inti- 
mations are, they are not evidences or proofs of 
immortality. They are only intimations and sug- 


28 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


gestions. ‘There is a vast difference between these 
questionings and suggestions of our own hearts 
and the majestic words of Jesus Christ. Yet these 
intimations of life after death show how natural 


and reasonable the doctrine is, and how when the | 


revelation camne through Jesus Christ, it was a reve- 
lation which was in harmony with the deep desires 
of the heart of man. Deep calleth unto deep. 
When Columbus was sailing in his frail caravels 
toward the undiscovered continent of the west, he 
saw floating in the sea leaves and branches, which 
told him he must be drawing nigh to another world, 


and cheered by that conviction, he sailed ever on, — 


until at length the sands of the Bahamas shone 


white in the moonlight. Wind and tide carry man — 
across the ocean of existence. He cannot see the © 
land whither he is going, nor can he speak any ships — 


returning from that mysterious bourne. But in 


the affections and longings of his heart, in the deep- — 
est instincts of his being, in the shadow-like brevity — 
and pitiful incompleteness of life he sees portents — 
and intimations, floating messengers of the unseen,, 


which help him to believe that beyond the waste of 
time’s ocean there is the shore of another world,— 


“—a land of pure delight 
Where saints immortal reign; 
Infinite day excludes the night, 
And pleasures banish pain.” 





II 
PAGAN IDEAS 


“It must be so,—FPlato, thou reasonest well! 

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality? 

Or whence this secret dread and inward horror 
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul 

Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 

’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 
And intimates Eternity to man. 

Eternity! Thou pleasing, dreadful thought.” 


—-ADDISON. 


I gather up the scattered rays 

Of wisdom in the early days,— 

Faint gleams, and broken, like the light 
Of meteors in a Northern night, 
Betraying to the darkling earth 

The unseen sun which gave them birth; 
I listen to the sibyl’s chant, 

The voice of priest and hierophant; 
I know what Indian Kreeshna saith, 
And what of life and what of death 
The demon taught to Socrates, 

And what, beneath his garden-trees 
Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread, 
The solemn-thoughted Plato said ; 
Nor lack I tokens, great or small, 

Of God’s clear light in each and all, 
While holding with more dear regard 
Than scroll of heathen seer and bard 
The starry pages, promise-lit, 

With Christ's evangel overwrit, 

Thy miracle of life and death, 

O Holy One of Nazareth! 


—WHITTIER, Questions of Life. 


IT 
PAGAN IDEAS 


Pr “HE belief in a future life, though quick- 
"ened and confirmed by the Christian reve- 
lation, was not created by it. As com- 
pared with the great assurance of life hereafter 
which came with Jesus Christ, all the so-called ar- 
guments for immortality, such as those drawn 
from human instinct, from analogy, from the in- 
completeness of this life and from the vindication 
of justice, are but broken reeds when the bereaved 
soul drinks its cup of sorrow and yearns for a 
great promise upon which to lean. Nevertheless, 
the revelation through Christ came in the fulness 
of time. ‘When the fulness of time was come 
God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.” ‘This 
means that there was a long process of divine 
preparation before Christ came as the Resurrection 
and the Life. Let us now trace that preparation 
as we discover it in the religions and philosophies 
of the ancient peoples. 
Claims have been made concerning certain tribes, 
such as the Bechuanas in Africa, that they had no 
conception of immortality. But closer acquaint- 


anceship with primitive peoples would tend to sup- 
31 


32 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


port the natural and common sense conclusion that 
all men of all ages have had some idea of a life 
after death. What did man think when first he 
looked upon the face of death? In his drama of 
“Cain” Byron tries to describe the sensation and 
wonder of Cain as he stood over the body of the 
murdered Abel: 


“Who makes me brotherless? 

His eyes are open! then he is not dead! 
Death is like sleep; and sleep shuts down our 

lids. 
His lips, too, are apart; why, then he breathes! 
And yet I feelit not. His heart!—his heart! 
Let me see, doth it beat? methinks—No!— 
This is a vision, else I am become 
The native of another and a worse world. 


“ But he cannot be dead!—Is silence death? 
No; he will wake: then let me watch by him. 
Life cannot be so slight as to be quenched 
Thus quickly!—He hath spoken to me since— 
What shall I say to him? My brother!—No: 
He will not answer to that name for brethren 
Smite not each other. Yet—yet—speak to me! 
Oh, for a word more of that gentle voice, 
That I may bear to hear my own again!” 


The strange thing about death is that in spite 
of the fact that it has been here as long as man, it 


comes with new wonder and shock to the men of 


each new generation. When death invades the cir- 


: 


PAGAN IDEAS 33 


cle of our friends or family, we are forced to look 
on it with the same awe and surprise and wonder 
which Byron so splendidly imagines in the mind of 
Cain. 

One of the stories told of Buddha treats of this 
shock and amazement with which men first look on 
death. The only child of the young mother, Kisa- 
gotami, was dead. The mother clasped the child 
to her breast and went about from house to house, 
seeking medicine that would cure him. Finally, 
a Buddhist convert told her that the Buddha might 
tell her of a medicine that would restore the child. 
When she approached the sage he told her he could 
cure the child, but that she must bring to him 
mustard seed secured from some house where no 
parent or husband or son or slave had ever died. 
Eagerly and hopefully, she set out to get the mus- 
tard seed. But at each house, after she had been 
given the mustard seed, and had asked her ques- 
tion, if any had died there, the reply was always 
the same: “Lady! what is this that you say? 
The living are few, but the dead are many.” At 
length she began to understand that all must die, 
and leaving her child in the wood, she returned to 
the sage, and bowing to the impermanence of all 
things, entered the life of contemplation. 

The legend has a timeless significance, for after 
all, every bereaved mother must face death as that 


34 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY. 


Indian mother did. Death becomes a real fact to 
us only when it smites one of our own circle, or — 
when it lays its grim siege to the citadel of our — 
own life. There is no good reason to think that — 
death did not awaken wonder and yearning about — 
a future life just as much in the dawn of the race — 
as it does to-day. The fact is that as far back as — 
we can go we find death turning the thought of © 
man to the hereafter. A thousand customs, rites, — 
inscriptions, legends, poems and writings, bear — 
testimony to this universal idea of some kind of — 
a state of future existence. Immortality is not — 
an acquired idea, the result of evolution or de- © 
velopment, but an idea that has belonged to hu- © 
manity from the very beginning. 

Time would fail to tell of the various forms — 
which man’s idea of the future has taken. But j 
through all these different conceptions, the trans- | 
migration from shape to shape and soul to soul; or | 
the extinction of individuality in Nirvana; or the | 
reabsorption of the individual soul in the Universal — 
Soul; or the Homeric idea of the shades in the — 
nether world floating down the gloomy river and — 
toiling at their hopeless labours; or the American © 
Indian’s thought of the happy hunting grounds; — 
or the lofty conceptions of Greek philosophy,— — 
through them all there is heard speaking the con- 
viction that death is not the end, and that some _ 





PAGAN IDEAS 35 


kind of experience awaits man beyond the shadows 
of the grave. The interesting thing to note is that 
to-day, with faith in life hereafter established by 
the Christian revelation, there is but little theory 
and little speculation about the manner of life after 
death; whereas in the ancient world, with life and 
immortality not yet brought to light, men mapped 
out the beyond and described its occupations, its 
woes and its joys, with an amazing wealth of de- 
tail, The less men knew the more they told. 

In selecting one from among the many ancient 
peoples for a recital of their customs and beliefs 
concerning the dead, it is natural that our choice 
should fall on the Egyptians. Egypt is one vast 
sarcophagus, Its mighty monuments, the great- 
est ever reared by the hand of man, are reposi- 
tories for the dead, man’s comment in eternal stone 
on death and the life hereafter. In his Ingersoll 
Lectures on Immortality at Harvard University, 
Dr. Osler ventured the opinion that in their out- 
look toward life after death men might be di- 
vided into three classes: those who dreaded it; 
those who looked forward to, and those who never 
thought much about it at all. In his opinion, the 
vast number of men belong to the third group. 
Very likely he was wrong. ‘There are some things 
about which man cannot help thinking, and one 
of those things is the life hereafter. 


36 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


But whatever may be the case with our civiliza- 
tion to-day, it is certain that in that great Egyptian 
civilization, long dead and buried, but which played 
so influential a part in the destinies of the human 
race, death, and life to come, took a preéminent 
place. It was the thought of that ancient people 
concerning death which reared their temples and 
built the pyramids and “ enshrined whole genera- 
tions of Egypt’s embalmed population in richly 
adorned sepulchres of everlasting rock.” Those 
colossal tombs which have withstood the ravages 
of thirty centuries of time, and whose gigantic 
shadows still fall across the vast and solitary 
‘ plains, are magnificent and yet pathetic evidences 
of man’s protest against death and his hunger after 
the endless life. 

The recent unearthing of the tomb of one of the 
Pharaohs has brought this fact of Egypt’s thought 
of death to the attention of the whole world to- 
day. What before was presented only to the oc- 
casional traveler, or to the scholar and historian, 
has now been presented to the consideration of 
men everywhere throughout the civilized world. 
Millions of men followed the excavators and 
scholars as they worked their way from one cham- 
ber to another toward the resting place of the 
dead monarch. Men looked with wonder on the 
beautiful paintings and sculptures created by hands 


PAGAN IDEAS 37 


that have been in the dust for more than forty 
centuries, and beheld with curious awe the rich 
furnishings with which the chambers of the dead 
were appointed. Such prodigious labours, such 
lavishing of wealth and art, such magnificent em- 
bellishment and furniture, and all for the sake of 
an eviscerated human carcase, whose brain cavity 
had been stuffed with cotton and whose flesh and 
bones had been shrunken in ovens and painted with 
tar and swathed in uncounted bandages! 

What was the idea that was back of that vast 
labour and expense? It is easier to ask the ques- 
tion than it is to answer it. The tombs of the 
Pharaohs yield up their secrets from age to age, 
but they throw little light upon the meaning and 
purpose of all that elaborated mechanism of sep- 
ulture-and death. Some have thought that the 
body was thus carefully preserved from corruption 
because the Egyptians believed that the departed 
spirit would some day return to reanimate it. 
But there seems to be little ground for this sup- 
position, for although the doctrine of metempsy- 
chosis and transmigration was widely held in the 
ancient world it does not appear in this form, that 
of the spirit returning to its former abode. Others 
have ventured that the idea back of this extraordi- 
nary process of preserving the body was to keep the 
soul and body joined together in their journey into 


38 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


the unknown. But this, too, is unlikely, for even 
to the most undeveloped and untutored mind it is 
evident that at death the body and the spirit part 
company. 

We are probably nearer to the truth, though we 
walk here in an unknown territory and see through 
the glass darkly, if at all, when we say with Alger 
in his monumental work on the Doctrine of a Fu- 
ture Life, that “The adornment of the tomb, so 
lavish and varied with the Egyptians, was a grati- 
fication of the spontaneous workings of fancy and 
affection, and needs no far-fetched explanation.” 
The careful and tender way in which we array our 
dead for the grave, endeavouring to make them 
look as lifelike as possible, and finding no little 
consolation in that lifelike look, is after all but a 
different expression of that same desire to show 
affection to the dead, if possible to persuade our- 
selves that they are not really dead, which animated 
the Egyptian when he wrapped the body in a thou- 
sand bandages and deposited it in its magnificent 
resting place. The only difference is that we pre- 
serve the body for a shorter period of time, and 
build for it a less costly tomb. However the cus- 
tom was worked out and elaborated, and enshrined 
in priestly rites, we may be sure that back of it all 
was the great surge of human affection and the 
deep yearning after life more abundant. 


PAGAN IDEAS 39 


Careful as he was in the care and sepulture of 
the dead body, the Egyptian was not less careful 
and elaborate in his conception of what happened 
to the soul. For a description of the rites for the 
dead and the fate of the departed spirit these words 
of Alger will suffice: “ What was the significance 
of the funeral ceremonies. celebrated by the 
Egyptians over their dead? When the body had 
been embalmed, it was presented before a tribunal 
of forty-two judges sitting in state on the eastern 
borders of the lake of Acherusia. They made 
strict inquiry into the conduct and character of the 
deceased. Any one might make complaint against 
him, or testify in his behalf. If it was found that 
he had been wicked, had died in debt, or was other- 
wise unworthy, he was deprived of honourable 
burial and ignominiously thrown into a ditch. This 
was called Tartar, from the wailings the sentence 
produced among the relatives. But if he was 
found to have led an upright life, and to have been 
a good man, the honours of a regular interment 
were decreed him. The cemetery, a large plain 
environed with trees and lined with canals, lay 
on the western side of the lake, and was named 
Elisout, or rest. It was reached by a boat, a 
funeral barge in which no man could cross with- 
out an order from the judges and the payment of 
a small fee. 


40 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


“Tn these and other particulars some of the 
scenes supposed to be awaiting the soul in the other 
world were dramatically shadowed forth. Each rite 
was a symbol of a reality existing in solemn cor- 
respondence in the invisible state. What the priests 
did over the body on earth the judicial deities did 
over the soul in Amenthe.”’ Those who are familiar 
with Greek mythology will recognize in all this 
much that appears in the Greek thought of the soul 
after death. But long centuries before these ideas 
can be traced among the Greeks, we find them 
among the Egyptians, leaving little doubt that the 
Greeks borrowed them from the Egyptians. 
Where did the Egyptians get them? 

In the next life the processes of judgment are 
continued and finished. In the terrible Hall of 
the Two Truths, or the Hall of Double Justice, the 
rewarding and the punishing, the soul is weighed 
in the balance and the decisive sentence is pro- 
nounced. If condemned, the soul is scourged back 
to earth again to live in the form of some vile 
beast or plunged into the fire of hell. If justified, 
the soul is permitted to join the company of the 
sun god in joyful pursuits in the Fields of the Sun 
on the banks of the heavenly Nile. v 

Such, then, were some of the popular ideas of 
the life hereafter forty centuries ago. No one can 
doubt that there was much here which was on the 


PAGAN IDEAS 41 


side of virtue and sober living. Although our 
world is a different world, yet man’s moral world, 
whether to-day or forty centuries ago, is much the 
same. Although it all belongs to that forever van- 
ished civilization and religion, who can read of 
that ordeal of the departed soul, the searching 
inquisition into his past and character before the 
forty-two judges, and the resulting sentence of 
bliss or woe, without feeling anew the deep solemn- 
ity of life and destiny, without thinking of his own 
sins, and without hearing those words spoken by 
God to the soul, by so many signs and rites, and 
through so many religions, “ Stand in awe and sin 
not”? Even Egypt’s tombs reason with us of 
righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. 
These ancient views of the future were charac- 
terized by the great idea of retribution. Indeed, 
one may say that man everywhere has held to three 
ideas, that there is a God, that there is a hereafter, 
and that in that hereafter there will be a judgment. 
“It is appointed unto all men once to die, but after 
this the judgment,” is a New Testament saying, 
but it embodies an idea that is as old and universal 
as man. Though hand join in hand the wicked 
shall not go unpunished. To the ancient mind as 
well as to the modern mind, and sometimes with 
much more reality and intensity, the order of this 
world was conceived of as a moral order, and 


42 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


righteousness and judgment as the habitation of 
God’s throne. 

One of the noblest expressions of this idea of 
retribution in the hereafter is that found in the 
last part of Plato’s Republic, where Socrates, into 
whose mouth Plato puts his ideas on immortality, 
relates the dream of Erus. Erus, the son of 
Armenius, was desperately wounded in battle in 
Pamphylia. When men came to bury the decom- . 
posing bodies of the slain a few days after the 
battle, they found the body of Erus fresh and un- 
corrupted. Huis body was carried to his home and 
prepared for burial. On the twelfth day after 
the battle, as he lay on his funeral pyre, Erus re- 
vived and related what he had seen in the other 
world. After his soul had left the body he went 
with a great company to a mysterious place on the 
borders of heaven and earth. In the earth there 
were two great gaps and opposite to them similar 
gaps in heaven. A never ceasing stream of souls 
was passing up out of the earth toward heaven 
and down from heaven into the earth. At the 
two gaps the judges had set up their thrones, and 
there the stream of souls coming.from the earth 
was divided into two companies, the just being 
commanded to take the road to the right leading 
up to heaven, and the unjust the road to the left, 
Jeading downward into the earth. The just bore 


PAGAN IDEAS 43 


placards declaring their virtues, and the unjust 
placards telling of their sins and misdeeds. When 
the turn of Erus came to appear before the judges, 
they told him that he should be a witness of all 
that took place after the judgment and then tell 
to his fellow men on the earth all that he had seen. 

In the Phzedo of Plato, where Socrates again is 
the speaker, there is a remarkable passage which 
one may well characterize as the high water-mark 
of Greek thought and hope concerning immortality. 
After having given all his arguments and reasons 
for immortality, and as if realizing their inade- 
quacy, Plato reaches out after some more sure word 
of a divine revelation, and makes Socrates say, 
“We must either learn the truth from others or 
find it out for ourselves. If both ways fail us, 
amidst all human reasons we must fix upon the 
strongest and most forcible, and trust to that as 
to a ship, while we pass through this stormy sea 
and endeavour to avoid its tempests, until we find 
out one more firm and sure, such as a promise or 
revelation, upon which we may happily accom- 
plish the voyage of this life, as in a vessel that fears 
no danger.” 

In any sketch of the pre-Christian literature on 
immortality a high place must be given to the 
beautiful passage at the close of Cicero’s Essay on 
Old Age, where he puts into the mouth of Cato 


44 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


his highest hope and thought of the life to come. 
This passage is all the more interesting because the 
essay was written at a time when Cicero sought in 
philosophy and meditation relief from the political 
storms that were then sweeping over the Roman 
state, and escape from his own poignant grief over 
the death of his beloved daughter, Tullia. After 
giving many reasons why death is not to be 
dreaded by a good man, Cicero concludes with this 
justly celebrated apostrophe: 


“From this life I depart as from a temporary 
lodging, not as from a home. For nature has as- 
signed it to us as an inn to sojourn in, not a place of 
habitation. Oh, glorious day! when I shall depart 
to that divine company and assemblage of spirits, 
and quit this troubled and polluted scene! For I 
shall go to my friend Cato, than whom never was 
better man born, nor more distinguished for pious 
affection; whose body was burned by me, whereas, 
on the contrary, it was fitting that mine should be 
burned by him. But his soul, not deserting me, but 
oft looking back, no doubt departed to those regions 
whither I saw that I myself was destined to come: 
Which, though a distress to me, I seemed patiently 
to endure: not that I bore it with indifference, but 
I comforted myself with the recollection that the 
separation and distance between us would not con- 
tinue long: For these reasons, O Scipio, old age is 
tolerable to me, and not only not irksome, but even 
delightful. And if I am wrong in this, that I be- 
lieve the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly 
delude myself: nor do I desire that this mistake, in 


PAGAN IDEAS 45 


which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as 
long as I live: but if I, when dead, shall have no 
consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers 
imagine, I do not fear lest dead philosophers should 
ridicule this my delusion.” 


At this long range, it is exceedingly difficult for 
us to say just what influence the speculations and 
opinions of the sages and philosophers exerted upon 
conduct or to what degree they afforded comfort 
to the bereaved. The impression one receives is 
that there was a gulf fixed between these literary 
and philosophical discussions and the practical at- 
titude taken by the authors of these beautiful sen- 
timents when they came face to face with the last 
enemy. When Cicero penned those eloquent lines 
how much comfort was he finding for himself 
in his grief over Tullia? Did he really expect 
to meet her again? Or does he merely sketch a 
hypothetical existence and reunion after death, 
when all the time in his heart of hearts he believes 
that the grave is the end of all? The closing words 
of Cicero’s great apostrophe have in them a sad in- 
timation that the gifted orator had no real hope 
of life to come and felt that reason was against it. 
These great passages in pre-Christian literature do 
but serve to emphasize the fact that life and im- 
mortality were brought to light in the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ. 


bia 
f 


—= 





iB Ot 
OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 


“ Souls of the righteous in the hand of God, 
Nor hurt nor torment cometh them a-nigh, 
O holy hope of mmortality! 

To eyes of men unwise they seem to die. 
They are at peace—O fairest liberty! 
Souls of the righteous in the hand of God. 
On earth as children chastened by Love’s rod, 
As gold in furnace tried, 
So now on high they shine lke stars, 
A golden galaxy.” 
—Booxk oF WISDOM. 


III 
OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 


4 “HERE is no subject upon which it is more 
difficult for a Christian man to write than 
that of the doctrine of immortality as 

taught in the Old Testament. The reason for this 

is that it is almost impossible to recede from the 

New Testament position and divest ourselves of 

those ideas which are distinctively Christian. Try 

as we may, we can hardly keep from reading into 
the Old Testament passages meanings which are 
the gift of the New Testament revelation. 

The Apostle said that Christ brought life and 
immortality to light in the Gospel. The Christian 
revelation strengthened and confirmed the idea of 
life hereafter, rather than created it, for the 
thought and the desire of life after death belong: 
to man’s nature. In this sense, then, Christ 
brought to light the great hope that had always 
burned within the breast of man. But the saying 
of St. Paul may also apply to the doctrine of im- 
mortality as taught in the Old Testament. ‘The 
hope was there, but it burned faintly. Our task 


now is to try to discover to what extent the doc- 
49 


50 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


trine of immortality was held and taught in the 
old dispensation. 

Before we try to show what is taught in the Old 
Testament, it will help if we mention some of the 
things which are not there. ‘The Hebrews were 
an eastern people, yet in their sacred literature we 
do not find any trace of some of those ideas which 
were so popular with ancient and eastern peoples. 


There is no trace of the doctrine of pantheism in 


any of its forms. ‘The idea of the soul of man 


being merged at death in the life of God was alto- — 


gether foreign to Hebrew thought. Some have 


cited the saying in Ecclesiastes 12:7, “And the 
spirit shall return to God who gave it” as remi- — 


niscent of the doctrine of pantheism. But there 


is slender ground for such interpretation. The 
fact is that the Hebrew idea of God was so exalted — 
and majestic that the doctrine of man’s soul merg- — 


ing with the soul of God at death would have been 


repugnant in the extreme. The Hebrew gave man — 
a high place, “a little lower than the angels,” but — 
he shrinks from making the soul of man an ema- — 


nation from, or an ultimate portion of, the soul of 
God. Nor do we find any trace of the idea of the 


preéxistence and the transmigration of souls. The — 
idea of metempsychosis, or transmigration, has al- 
ways exerted a certain fascination over the mind — 
of man. It was elaborated to an extraordinary - 








—_—— ass 


——— 


——— ee Ee ee 


OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 51 


degree as the seers of the ancient world sought to 
trace the destinies of men in the hereafter, and to 
account for the fate of men in this world. But 
this thought of the wandering of the soul and the 
various tabernacles which it inhabits in the cycles 
of its existence is not to be found in the Old Testa- 
ment. Nor is there any studied doctrine of ma- 
terialism, or extinction of being, that the grave is 
the end of man. | 

There are passages in the Old Testament which 
strike the notes of deepest despondency, and which, 
to one not familiar with the Old Testament as a 
whole, might seem to indicate a belief that man 
came to an end at death. One of the best known 
passages of this nature is the noble lament of the 
Thirty-ninth Psalm, read so frequently at funeral 
services. The Psalm comes to a close with this 
prayer: 


“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear ynto 
my cry; } 
Hold not thy peace at my tears: 
For I am a stranger with thee, and 
A sojourner, as all my fathers were. 
Oh, spare me, that I may recover strength, 
Before I go hence, and be no more.” 


“And be no more!” Was that the Psalmist’s 
thought of the future? Another passage of simi- 
| lar tone is that of Job 7: 21, 22: 


52 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


“And why dost thou not pardon my transgression; 
and take away mine iniquity? 
For now shall I sleep in the dust; 
And Thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I 
shall not be.” 


Here Job pleads with God to show him His good- 
ness and forgiveness in this life, for when he is 
dead, God will not be able to show him His loving 
kindness. Of the same temper is the celebrated 
passage in Job 14: 7-10: 


“ For there is hope of a tree, 
If it be cut down, that it will sprout again, 
And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. 
Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, 
And the stock thereof die in the ground; 
Yet through the scent of water it will bud, 
And put forth boughs lke a plant. 
But man dieth, and wasteth away; 
Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?” 


In Ecclesiastes 3: 19-22, the Preacher seems to 
feel that man at death has no advantage over the 
beast of the field: 


“For that which befalleth the sons of men be-— 
falleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as one 
dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one 
breath; so that man hath no preéminence above a 
beast: for all 1s vanity. All go unto one place; all 
are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who 
knoweth the spirit of man, that goeth upward, and 
the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the 
earth?” 


OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 53 


What shall we think of passages like these just 
cited? Certainly we are not to think of them as 
representative of the Old Testament teaching on 
the subject of the hereafter. They represent the 
pathos of human grief, the temporary eclipse of 
what faith the speaker had as to the future. They 
echo the music of the soul of man when sub- 
merged in the depths. Even among Christian be- 
lievers the anguish of bereavement or personal 
vicissitude will wring cries of despair and unbelief 
from the soul. Yet we should not take such ut- 
terances as characteristic of the Christian thought 
as to the future; and no more should we think that 
the gloom and pessimism of the passages just 
quoted indicate the common view of the Old Testa- 
ment believer. 

There are two great doctrines taught in the Old 
Testament which are not to be reconciled with 
materialism, or extinction of being. First, there | 
is the doctrine of God. ‘The Hebrew exalted God 
to a throne of awful majesty, but also trusted in 
Him as a God who deals in fatherly love with men 
in this present world. He had an intense convic- 
tion that God was his refuge and his strength, his 
helper and guide. The Twenty-third Psalm, often 
quoted as a Psalm dealing with immortality, has 
this thought of God’s providence for its theme. 

We must be careful about reading our faith 


54 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


back into the Old Testament, but we find it diffi- 
cult to believe that men who lived so near to God 
and trusted Him so implicitly as Abraham and 
David and Isaiah, could think that their relation- 


ship with God came to an end at death. The other | 


doctrine in the Old Testament which is hostile to 
the idea of death as the end is the doctrine of man. 
No book exposes so relentlessly the sin and degra- 


dation of human nature. Yet no book gives man 


so high a place as the Old Testament. The story 
of the creation of man in the image of God, with 
dominion over the creatures, with a living soul 
breathed into him by the Creator, puts man in a 


class by himself. He is “a little lower than the. 


angels,’ and in behalf of man the great revelation 
of the law and the prophets is given and the great 
activities of Old Testament worship and redemp- 
tion are initiated. The comparative silence of the 
Old Testament as to immortality must not blind 
our eyes to the magnificent conception of man 
bearing the image of God which we find there, and 
such a conception could hardly have been held if 
it was thought that man came to an end in the dust. 
In that event there would be nothing magnificent 
about man’s nature, and he would indeed have no 
preéminence over the beast of the field. 

However men may regard it to-day, the Old 
Testament believer did not think of death as a 





OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 55 


natural fact in man’s career. Death is introduced 
as an intruder, an interloper, an enemy, as the 
penalty upon sin. We speak to-day of death as 
the “debt we owe to nature.’ But in the Old 
Testament death is spoken of as the debt we owe 
to sin, to the transgression of the moral law. The 
wages of sinis death. We carry this over into the 
next world, and make it refer to death eternal, 
banishment from the presence of God. But death, 
even as physical fact in this life, is looked upon in 
the Old Testament as a monstrous disorder, due 
to man’s transgression. But if death were the 
natural and proper ending of human existence, 
how then did the Hebrews come to regard it as 
unnatural, as a curse, as the crowning calamity of 
their existence? The fact that they did so regard 
death shows that they believed that man was des- 
tined to live forever. 

The silence of Moses on the subject of im- 
mortality has often been remarked. He must have 
been versed in the lore of Egypt and familiar with 
the Egyptian view of life to come and the over- 
emphasis upon death and the after-death which 
characterized that people and their religion. Yet 
in the laws and customs which he gave to Israel 
Moses makes no reference to future reward or 
future punishment as motives of conduct. God’s 
dealings and judgments seem to be confined to the 


a 


56 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


arena of this world. Because of this lack of refer- 
ence to life to come men have spoken disparag- 
ingly of the Mosaic legislation and of the Hebrew 
religion. Even Kant thought the religion of 
Israel lacking in one of the essentials of a true 
religion, though he held that Moses and other Old 
Testament worthies themselves knew and believed 
the doctrines of immortality, but hid it from the 
people. Warburton, in his famous book, the Di- 
vine Legation of Moses, in treating of this prob- 
lem turns the tables on the deists and declares that 
the absence of the doctrine of immortality from 
the books of Moses is a proof of their divine 
origin, for no man speaking merely out of human 
experience and wisdom, could have given laws to 
a people and made no reference to the future life. 

The name given to the abode of the dead in the 
Old Testament is Sheol, the hollow place. Sheol 
is not the grave, for Jacob, who did not know 
where the body of Joseph was, says that he will 
go “down to Sheol to my son mourning”; and 
Abraham was “ gathered to his fathers,” although 
he was buried in Macpelah, and they in Mesopo- 
tamia. In the nether world wicked Saul and his 
sons will be with righteous Samuel. Moral dis- 
tinctions seem to be lost sight of; the inhabitants 
of Sheol are dim and meagre shades, living a mis- 
erable existence, cut off from the joy of life, and — 


OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 57 


banished from the presence of God. One of the lat- 
est believers, and most disciplined saints of the Old 
Testament, Hezekiah, draws back with terror from 
the realm of the dead, declaring in his song of 
thanksgiving after his recovery from sickness: 


“The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot cele- 
brate thee: 
They that go down into the pit cannot hope for 
thy truth, 
The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do 
this day.” 


It has been well observed that it is not lack of 
religion in the Old Testament which accounts for 
the comparative silence on the life to come, but 
the great amount of religion. Even to-day, when 
we wish to quote some passage which will speak to 
our troubled hearts and assure them of God and 
His providential care over our lives, it is a verse 
from the Old Testament that we quote, and not 
a verse from the New Testament. Why is this? 
Because the Old Testament saint had so intense a 
conviction and sense of the presence and power of 
God in his life here on earth. However much it 
may seem to us that the Old Testament writers 
ignore the life to come, they certainly do not deny 
it, nor discount it, but rather keep silent about it 
because their deep sense of God’s presence in this 
life overshadowed the life to come. 


58 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


In his History of the People of Israel Renan has 
a chapter in which he deals with the doctrine of the 
future life in its relationship to the Jews. Accord- 
ing to his idea the ancient son of Shem believed 
that virtue must meet with its reward, but that the 
only time and place for that reward is this world. 
As the history of the race unfolded, as in the his- 
tory of any race or any individual, there were great 
obstacles in the way of this view that sin was 
perfectly punished and virtue perfectly rewarded 
in this world. In so many instances the evil pros- 
pered and the good were afflicted. Yet the theory 
was warmly adhered to in spite of the questions 
which the life of the nation and the life of the 
individual raised concerning it. At the end of his 
long series of adversities Job is rewarded by get- 
ting back his possession in twofold measure and by 
having the same number of sons and daughters 
which he had before his misfortunes overtook him. 

According to this theory, it was not until a late 
day in the history of Israel, the captivity, and the 
persecutions of Antiochus, that the Hebrews began 
to look for rewards in the life to come. There was 
little hope for the crushed and scattered nation, so 
far as this world was concerned, but in another life 
the Kingdom of God would be realized. “ The 
martyr was the creator of the belief in another 
hife.”’ Thus, side by side, there arose at a late 


OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 59 


hour in Israel’s history the two doctrines of the 
future which we find in the New Testament, the 
Kingdom of God and the resurrection of the body. 
This idea of the victory of righteousness and the 
sharing in that victory in life to come by all the 
righteous is familiar to all of us as Christians, 
Thus the Hebrews developed this idea as a result 
of the conflict between their belief in the holiness 
of God, that reward must be punished, and their 
observation and experience that life is brief and 
full of injustices, and that Israel was scattered and 
trampled under foot of the nations. 

As we shall see, there is much in the Old Testa- 
ment history which does not fit in with the de- 
velopment theory of the origin of the Hebrew 
hope of immortality. Yet we are indebted to 
Renan and this chapter for one of: the finest ap- 
praisements of the value of the doctrine of im- 
mortality to men and nations. He says: “ For let 
us not deceive ourselves: man is governed by noth- 
ing but his conception of the future. Any nation 
which en masse gives up all faith in what lies 
beyond the grave will become utterly degraded. 
An individual may do great things, and yet not 
believe in immortality; but those around him must 
believe in it, for-him and for themselves.” 

The story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac 
awakens great interest in connection ygith the Old 


60 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


Testament outlook on the life to come. The 
promise of God had been fulfilled, and to Sarah and 
Abraham in their old age a son had been born. 
Through this son the great promises for the future 
of the race were to be fulfilled. It was not, there- 
fore, only a son that God told Abraham to offer up 
as a sacrifice, but a son in whose life were bound 
up all the great blessings that God had promised 
would come to men through his descendants. Yet 
Abraham, whatever his inward Gethsemane of 
anguish, proceeded at once to carry out the awful 
mandate and offer up his son Isaac. 

When on the third day they saw the mount in the 
distance, Abraham said to the servants, “Abide ye 
here with the ass and I and the young man will go 
yonder; and we will worship and come again to 
you.” Was this just the polite language of dis- 
missal, or did Abraham really believe that he and 
Isaac would return together to that spot? The 
inspired writer of the letter to the Hebrews in his 
eloquent and extended reference to Abraham. as 
one of the heroes of faith says of him that “ By 
faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up 
Isaac; and, he that had received the promises 
offered up his only begotten son; even he to whom 
it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: ac- 
counting that God was able to raise up, even from 
the dead, from whence also he received him, in 


OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 61 


a figure.” The author of the Hebrews here says 
plainly that in his sore trial of offering up Isaac 
Abraham was sustained by faith in a resurrection. 
It may be asked whether it is meant that Abraham 
believed that God would at once restore Isaac back 
to this life, after he had been sacrificed? or does 
the faith of Abraham embrace also a general res- 
urrection? 

That the faith of Abraham embraced not only a 
special act of God with regard to the resurrection 
of Isaac, but also the general resurrection and 
future existence of God’s people is clearly inti- 
mated by what the writer of Hebrews says in this 
same passage about the expectations of Abraham 
and his descendants: “ By faith Abraham, when he 
was called, obeyed to go out into a place which he 
was to receive for an inheritance: and he went out, 
not knowing whither he went. By faith he became 
a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not 
his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, 
the heirs with him of the same promise: for he 
looked for the city which hath foundations, whose 
builder and maker is God. By faith even Sarah 
herself received power to conceive seed when she 
was past age, since she counted him faithful who 
had promised, wherefore also there sprang of one, 
and him as good as dead, as many as the stars in 
heaven for multitude, and as the sand which is by 


62 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


the seashore innumerable. These all died in 
faith, not having received the promises, but having 
seen them and greeted them afar off, and having 
confessed that they were pilgrims and strangers on 
the earth. For they that say such things make 
it manifest that they are seeking after a country 
of their own. And if they had been mindful of 
that country from which they went out, they would 
have had opportunity to return. But now they de- 
sire a better country, even a heavenly: wherefore 
God is not ashamed of them to be called their God, 
for he hath prepared for them a city.” 

Such a passage as this floods the Old Testa- 
ment with the hope of life to come. In order to 
make it clear that the country they were desiring 
was not the country whence they had come, the 
writer says, that had that been their wish, they 
could have returned thither at any time. In this 
great reference, then, we have the soul’s deep and 
wistful yearning for its true native land, not Ur 
of the Chaldees, but the kingdom of God. The 
only portion of the promised land that Abraham 
ever purchased or possessed in Canaan was the 
Cave of Macpelah, where he buried his dead. Per- 
haps it was not until in that plot of ground which 
he purchased from the children of Heth Abraham 
buried Sarah, the loved and beautiful companion 
of all his wanderings, and sharer with him in the 


OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 63 


great promise, and necessary co-agent with him in 
the fulfilment of the promise, that Abraham real- 
ized that the promise involved more than lands and 
holding in Canaan, and that he was on a journey 
to a more distant land than Canaan, even to that 
city which hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God. ‘The blessing is to be as eternal 
as God Himself. Such, certainly, is the impression 
one would receive from reading the New Testa- 
ment reference to Abraham in the epistle to the 
Hebrews, which, if not written by Paul, was at 
least written by one who was an expert on Old 
Testament history and theology. 

In the Psalms there are three great passages 
which ring with the immortal hope. All inter- 
pretations which make these passages refer only to 
man’s life here violate the simple common-sense 
meaning. The first of these is the Sixteenth 
Psalm, vs. 10, 11: 


“ For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; 
Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see cor- 
ruption. 
Thou wilt show me the path of life: 
In thy presence 1s fulness of joy; 
At thy right hand there are pleasures forever 
more.” 


St. Paul uses this Psalm as a prophecy of the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ, saying that the body 


64 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


of David did see corruption. Thus he makes the 
Psalmist refer, not to himself, but to Christ. 
Nevertheless, although the prophets, as Peter tells 
us, frequently referred to Christ when they knew 
it not, we are justified in hearing in this noble 
Psalm the hope of the singer himself for life after 
death. 

The second notable passage in the Psalms is 
found in Psalm Forty-nine, verses 14, 15. The 
Psalmist has been wrestling with that problem 
which so vexed the Old Testament mind, the pros- 
perity of the wicked and the adversity of the 
righteous. He solves the problem by assuring 
himself that the wicked shall go down to Sheol 
and remain there: 


“ Like sheep they are laid in the grave; 
Death shall feed on them.” 


But with the righteous it shall not be so: 


“ But God will redeem my soul from the power of 
the grave; 
For He shall receive me.” 


A noble climax to the expressions of faith in 
immortality in the Psalms is found in the Seventy- 
third Psalm, verses 18-25. Again the Psalmist is 
grappling with the problem of the prosperity of the 
wicked in this world, and again his solution is 
their complete and final overthrow at death: 


OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 65 


“Thou castedst them down into destruction. 
How are they brought into desolation as in a mo- 
ment!” 


But the Psalmist hopes for a different end: 


“ Nevertheless, I am continually with thee: 
Thou hast holden me by my right hand, 
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, 
And afterward receive me to glory.” 


No survey of the Old Testament teaching would 
do justice to the subject which did not cite the 
great declaration of Job, nineteenth chapter, verses 
21-27. Still holding fast to his integrity and pro- 
testing against reproaches of his friends, Job pleads 
for a future vindication before God: 


“ Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my 


friends, 
For the hand of God hath touched me. 
2 2 a hy Se * * * 


Oh, that my words were now written! 

Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! 

That with an tron pen and lead 

They were graven in the rock forever! 

But as for me I know that my Redeemer liveth, 
And at the last He will stand upon the earth: 
And after my skin, even this body is destroyed, 
Then without my flesh shall I see God; 

Whom I, even I, shall see on my side, 

And mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.” 


66 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


Despite all skillful efforts to make this refer to 
God’s vindication of him in this life only, Job’s 
words echo and reécho in sermon, hymn, prayer, 
and oratorio, for when the Christian faces the fact 
of death, and when his feet are going down into 
the river, there are no words which voice so 
triumphantly his sure hope of a resurrection from. 
the grave and life forever with God. 

If you have gone to the top of a mountain to 
watch the sunrise, you will remember how first the 
mass of blackness faded into gray; then, that dull 
and heavy gray was shot through and through with 
bars of gold, the heralds of the king of day him- 
self. The passages quoted from Job and the 
Psalms are not the radiant hope and the full glory 
of the New Testament revelation; but they are 
foregleams of that bright day. Once worshipping ) 
in the old Scottish Church at Warwick, Bermuda, 
I heard Dr. Francis L. Patton, in a sermon on 
this subject, sum up the difference between the Old — 
Testament and the New Testament faith in im- | 
mortality. Placing his hand on the stone pillar | 
of the pulpit, Dr. Patton quoted the verse of the | ) 
Twenty-third Psalm, “ Yea, though I walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, yet will I fear 
no evil.” “There,” said Dr. Patton, “is the high- 
water mark of the Old Testament faith: Willing 


Soe eee vanes 


to go, but wanting to stay.” Then, placing his — 


mneseseraeee 





OLD TESTAMENT IDEAS 67 


hand higher up on the pillar, he quoted the words | 
of St. Paul in Philippians, “For I am in a strait 
betwixt two, having the desire to depart and to | 
be with Christ, which is very far better; yet. to | 
abide in the flesh is needful for your sake.” — 
“There,” said Dr. Patton, “is the high-water mark 
of the New Testament faith in the hereafter: 
Wanting to go, but willing to stay!” 





IV 
CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 


¢ ae — oo 


“Friend after friend departs; 
Who hath not lost a friend? 
There-is no union here of hearts, | 
That finds not here an end; 
Were this frail world our only rest, 7 
Living or dying, none were blest. 


“ Beyond the fight of time, 
Beyond the vale of death, 
There surely is some blessed clime, 
Where life is not a breath, 
Nor life’s affections transient fire, 
Whose sparks fly upward and expire. 


“ There is a world above, 4 
Where parting is unknown; 
A whole eternity of love, 
Form’'d for the good alone; 
And fatih beholds the dying here 
Translated to that happier sphere.” 


—JaMES MontTcoMERY im “ The Unseen Universe.” 





Yi . 
} t 
» 3 ) I 
j li ¥ ’ 
ie y 


CAN WE, TALK WITH THE DEAD? 


RAVELING once in Russia, my brother 
and I arrived late at night at the station 
in Petrograd. Unable to speak a word 

of the country’s language, nor even to read the 
barbarous signs which we saw here and there, we 
had to depend altogether upon the good-will of 
those with whom we tried to communicate our 
ideas by falling back upon the universal language 
of signs. A rather villainous-looking drosky 
driver got us into his carriage, and we showed him 
a slip of paper with the name of the hotel written 
upon it. After a long and circuitous drive through 
the rambling town, with the light of the northern 
summer beginning to fade from the huge, tawny 
buildings, we at length drew up before a hotel. 
It was not the hotel we had named, but our driver 
mumbled something that seemed to imply that the 
other hotel was closed. 

We therefore alighted, and after supper were 
conducted to two bedrooms, like everything else 
in Russia, enormous. ‘The feeling of remoteness 


from our own land and language and people, in- 
71 


42 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


deed, from anything with which we had been fa- 
miliar, the new manners and customs and tongue, 
and the strange silence of the vast hostelry where 
we were established, produced in me something 
akin to uneasiness, and a cloud of depression crept 
over me. Before I closed my eyes I struck the 
wall at my side several times with my hand. At 
once there came back answering knocks from my 
brother on the other side of the wall. I knew 
then that all was well with him and he knew that 
all was well with me. 

Pilgrims together, my friend and I take the long 
and winding path through life. By and by, the 
shadows of the night come down and the pilgrims 
are separated, and one is left to be brave alone. 
Between us death uplifts its dark wall and heavy 
barricade. Then what? It is not strange that I 
should wonder how it fares with him, nor is it 
strange that I should wonder if he is “ conscious 
or not of the past.” 

“ Ah! Christ, that it were possible 
_ For one short hour to see 


The souls we love, that they might tell us | 
What and where they be.” 


If I knock on this grim wall of death, shall I 
get an answer from the chamber on-the other side 


of the wall? The question, it goes without say- 
ing, is one of great interest. From many quarters 


CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 73 


there comes the reply that we can so communicate 
with those who have lived and died, that many of 
those on this side of the wall are carrying on con- 
versations with those on the other side of the wall. 
Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle, one a 
great name in physical science and the other a 
notable name in popular literature, have not only 
told to a limited number of friends their experi- 
ences in this kind of communication with discar- 
nate spirits, but they have entered upon a public 
proclamation of their belief, declaring that they 
feel they have a great and comforting revelation 
for distressed and sorrowing humanity. 

When I speak of these witnesses, and bear in 
mind, too, that great numbers of less distinguished 
persons who, in their more limited circles, tell a 
similar story, I will try not to forget the fact that 
death breaks many a heart, darkens many a home, 
and banishes the sunlight from many a life. ‘“ Oh, 
death! it is a dreadful thing.” In speaking, there- 
fore, of any hope or experience, alleged or other- 
wise, which it is claimed brings comfort to sad 
and lonely hearts, I must speak with compassion, 
and not with scorn or denunciation. I have stood 
by too many open graves and tried to speak a word 
of comfort to too many wounded hearts, to refer 
to even a false hope or imaginary experience with 
anything but a desire to comfort the comfortless, 


74 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


and guide them into the path of truth as it is in 
our Lord Jesus Christ. 

We believe as Christians that the soul of man 
lives on after it has been separated from the body, 
but I have never felt it to be a necessary concomi- 
tant of such a faith to believe that spirits out of the 
body can have intercourse with incarnate spirits. 
The spiritualist, of course, will reply that it makes 
no difference what I, or any one else, believe, for 
he has had such communication. . Personally, I 
have never had nor wished to have such communi- 
cation. Until I do, my attitude must be one of 
doubt. When I hear the remarkable testimonies 
that are being given by those who have spoken 
with the dead, my conviction is that in many in- 
stances they are mistaken, and that they are mis- 
taken through the operation of strange laws and 
forces of which we know little or nothing. I can 
no more prove to the spiritualist that he is mis- 
taken than he can prove to me that he has seen 
and talked with a spirit. I believe that if we knew 
more than we do we should understand how good 
‘and wise men have been deluded into the belief 
that they were talking with men who had died. 

If the whole Christian Church has consistently 
testified against spiritualism and all its practices, 
there certainly must be some basis in the Bible for 
this deep repugnance. The Roman Catholic 


CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 5 


Church by its decrees forbids any Catholic to at- 
tempt to speak with the dead. The Protestant 
Church, not by particular articles of confession, 
but by the whole tone of its teaching, declares the 
thing to be sinful.k Why? Primarily because the 
Bible forbids it. It is true that evil results can 
be noted in the life and faith of those who resort 
to this twilight practice, but even if there were no 
such ill results to be noted, the mere fact that the 
Bible repeatedly and consistently declares against 
the practice would lead any Church which pre- 
tended to take the Bible as a guide to lay an in- 
terdict upon spiritualism. 

Let me quote some of the declarations of the 
Old Testament Law on this subject: “ Regard not 
them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after 
wizards, to be defiled by them. I am the Lord 
your God ” (Leviticus 19: 81). “And the soul that 
turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and 
after wizards to go a whoring after them, I will 
even set my face against that soul, and will cut 
him off from among his people. Sanctify your- 
selves, therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the 
Lord your God” (Leviticus 20: 6, 7). 

“ There shall not be found among you any one 
that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through 
the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of 
times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, 


46 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, 
or a necromancer. For all that do these things 
are an abomination unto the Lord” (Deuteronomy 
18: 10-12). 

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 
22: 18). 

The terminology changes, but the practice re- 
mains the same. It is evident that what is meant 
by a person with a “ Familiar spirit” is just what 
is meant when we say “medium ’”’ to-day; that is, 
a person who either could, or claimed that he could, 
summon the spirit of a dead man and have inter- 
course with it. As we have seen from the pas- 
sages just quoted, the pious Hebrew was forbidden 
to have anything to do with such a person or in 
any way to seek knowledge or comfort from the 
dead. It is a crime against the majesty of God 
— “For I am the Lord thy God.” It defiles the 
man who engages in it. The sentence of death 
is declared against it. It is an abomination unto 
God, so much so that it is mentioned in connection 
with such sins as human sacrifices, incest and un- 
natural crimes of which it is a shame even to speak. 

This much, then, is clear: spiritualism, in so 
far as it means consulting psychic persons, or 
.\ media, trying in any way to establish communi- 

\ cation with the dead, is forbidden by the Law of 
God as we have it in the Old Testament. There 


CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? ‘7%7 


can be no doubt as to that. Was this but a tem- 
porary injunction, good for the Jews to keep them 
from being corrupted by heathen practices? Or 
is it equally binding upon us to-day? Those who 
look upon the Old Testament as just an interesting 
collection of ancient Hebrew writings will, of 
course, pay no more attention to this inhibition 
against spiritualism than they would to the articles 
of any ancient code. But a Church and an indi- 
vidual who believes that the Word of God is con- 
tained in the Old Testament must give this utter- 
ance against spiritualism very careful considera- 
tion. He cannot remove these sayings from the 
Bible; he cannot tone them down. ‘There they 
stand in all their naked wrath and severity. Even 
if a man does not feel in any way bound by the 
authority of the Bible, common sense would tell 
him that there must have been reasons why this 
law took its place among so many other laws of 
the Old Testament which all grant to be admirable. 
And if this dealing with the dead, or with those 
who claimed to have commerce with them, was 
injurious to the moral life of the individual and 
destructive of faith in God in Old Testament 
times, it certainly is not less so to-day. This is a 
commandment from God that relates to man’s life 
wherever he lives and in whatever age. What 
was true of spiritualism then, is true of it to-day. 


18 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


In the sunset of Saul’s life we have a dramatic 
passage (1 Samuel 28), which tells of his resort- 
ing to a woman with a familiar spirit and seeking 
to speak with Samuel, who had been dead for four 
years. That gloomy monarch, leaning upon his 
spear, saw the vast host of the Philistines as they 
pitched against him in Shunem. Saul, whatever 
his faults, was no coward; he was a soldier to the 
very last. But now he had a premonition that all 
would not go well with him in the coming battle. 
Unable to get any answer from the prophets that 
accompanied his army, Saul, like so many others 
in the time of distress and uncertainty, yielded to 
the temptation of the occult world and sought to 
read his fate before it was administered unto him. 
He told his servants to seek out a woman with a 
familiar spirit. So fearlessly had Saul enforced 
the law against this twilight traffic that it was with 
difficulty that a medium was located in a lonely 
glen at En-dor. In disguise, and with two of his 
companions, Saul went to the woman’s solitary 
abode. When he had quieted her fears that she 
was being trapped by royal agents, Saul asked her 
to call up Samuel. A noble tribute to Samuel, 
and touching, too, that Saul in his despair should ~ 
have turned for counsel to that man of God whose — 
words when he was alive he had scorned and dis- 
obeyed. The loud cry of fear that the woman. 


CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 79 


gave when the form of the aged Samuel appeared 
before her leads one to think that she was the 
most surprised person in the whole wretched pro- 
ceedings. I gather that, like so many of her class, 
she was nothing but an impostor and was terrified 
when the apparition of Samuel rose before her. 
- We cannot tell from the narrative whether Saul 
saw anything or not. But when he “ perceived,” 
either from the necromancer’s account, or with his 
own eyes, that he was face to face with Samuel, 
he fell prostrate on the ground. ‘Then follows the 
rebuke of Samuel and the prophecy of Saul’s death. 
Samuel is annoyed and disquieted that he has been 
called back from the land of the dead; he tells 
Said that it was wrong to seek advice or knowl- 
edge from the dead when he could get no answer 
from God. When he had pronounced the awful 
words, “ To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be | 
with me,” Saul fainted. The scene closes with a_ 
rather beautiful example of woman’s pity and ten- 
derness, for the witch forsook the spells and in- 
cantations of the nether world and nursed Saul 
baek to life and prepared a meal for him. 
However one interprets that strange scene, one 
cannot read into it any other meaning than that 
the practice of consulting the dead through media 
and psychic persons was, and is, abhorrent to the 
Living God. The whole thing is set forth in such 


80 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


detail as indicates a purpose of counsel and admoni- 
tion. ‘Ihe inspired chronicler took this to be the 
lesson, for in the account of Saul’s death in the 
Book of Chronicles (1 Chron. 10: 138), it is dis- 
tinctly stated that Saul perished “ for asking coun- — 
sel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of | 
it: and enquired not of the Lord: THEREFORE HE 
SLEW HIM.” It is given as a warning for Israel, © 
and ought to be a warning unto the end of time. 

In St. Luke’s Gospel we have the terrific parable 
of Dives and Lazarus. This was one of the few 
occasions on which Jesus drew back for a moment 
the veil that screens the state of man after death. 
I shall not repeat it now, except to say that in the 
case of each man there was a complete reversal of 
condition: the beggar was comforted and the rich 
man was tormented. Seeing Lazarus afar off, the 
rich man first requested that Abraham would send 
him to cool his tongue with cold water. Abraham 
replies that such a thing was neither proper nor 
was it possible: it was not proper because the rich 
man deserved to be tormented and the beggar de- 
served to be comforted; it was not possible, for ) 
a gulf was fixed between the two men and from 
neither side could an essay be made toward the’ 
other. Then Dives asks that if Lazarus cannot 
comfort him he be permitted to go and warn his 
five brothers, who were living just the same kind 


. 
4 
hl 
x 


CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 81 


of life that he had lived. ‘This also is denied him, 
on the ground that, even if such a thing could be 
done, it would have no good result. Not even a 
messenger from the dead could convert the men 
who refused to listen to the law and the prophets. 
This has a direct bearing upon the whole subject 
of spiritualism, teaching, first, the futility of it, 
and, secondly, raising the question as to whether 
such a thing is possible. In the one instance of the 
Bible where a dead man seeks to get into commu- 
nication with the living, the thing is forbidden by 
the authority of Christ Himself. 

I have heard persons refer to the Transfigura-_ 
tion as sort of a New Testament warrant for spir- 
itualism. That this should be so shows how far 
we can wander from the path of Christ and how 
one of the most uplifting and awe-inspiring inci- 
dents in His ministry can do very little for those — 
who approach it in the wrong spirit. While He 
prayed upon the mountain top Jesus was trans- 
figured before them, His countenance was altered, 
and, behold, there talked with Him two men, which 
were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory and 
spake of His decease which He should accomplish 
at Jerusalem. This certainly teaches that once, at 
least, men who had died appeared unto. aman on the 
earth. But remember that it was the Son of God 
to whom they appeared and with whom they talked, 


82 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


that they appeared to Him only when He was 
transfigured; and if the disciples, too, saw them!) 
‘in glory” it was only under the guidance of 
Christ and when His own glory was upon Him and 
around them. If Christ leads us into communica- 
tion with the dead, we need not fear to follow. 
But what a fearful contrast between that Mount 
of Transfiguration with the glorified Son of God 
standing upon it and those weird knockings, those 
tilting tables, those jangling bones, those peepings 
and mutterings, those dim chambers which are the 
platform and the enginery of them that now would 
hold communion with the dead! ; 
The Bible leaves us in no doubt as to whether 
there are evil spirits who seek to deceive man and 
harm his soul. The prophet Micaiah (1 Kings 
22: 22), when asked by Ahab to prophesy con- 
cerning the proposed expedition against Ramoth 
Gilead, declared that a lying spirit had gone forth 
to put a lie in the mouth of the prophets of Ahab 
so as to lure him on to his ruin. Elsewhere in the 
Old Testament the disastrous agency of evil spirits 
working upon those who have provoked the Lord 
their God is acknowledged and described. St. Paul — 
says in the New Testament (1 Timothy 4:1): 
“ Now the Spirit speaketh expréssly, that ifi the 
latter times some shall depart from the faith, giv- | . 
ing heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of ‘| 





CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 83 


devils.” The moment we step across the bound- 
aries of our own world we-are.face to face with 
the intelligences, good and evil, of a world where 
we are at a disadvantage, where we cannot be sure, 
where we are easily deceived, and where it is quite 
possible that lying spirits should make us their 
sport. 

That much of the spiritualistic phenomena is the 
work of malign spirits is the historic teaching of 
the Roman Catholic Church. In a letter to the 
Times for September 16th, 1917, Lord Alfred 
Douglas says: “As a Catholic I am forbidden to 
take part in a spiritual séance under pain of mortal 
sin, nor have I the least temptation to do so. But 
before I became a Catholic I occasionally dab- 
bled in spiritualism, and my own experiences were 
quite enough to convince me that the phenomena 
are sometimes perfectly genuine, and perfectly un- 
accountable except on a supernatural basis. The 
Catholic Church does not deny the phenomena. 
But it utterly denies that the ‘ spirits’ which give 
communications. are the souls of departed mor- 
tals. The phenomena of spiritualism are, the _ 
Church teaches, produced by devils and evil spirits. _ 
Their object is to deceive and betray the human | 
race.” 

The perusal of spiritualistic literature raises 
against it the great indictment of triviality, inanity, 


84 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


banality. Moses and Elias on the Mount spake 
with Jesus concerning His decease; their great 
theme of conversation was the redemptive work 
of Christ, His once offering of Himself up as a 
sacrifice for the sins of the world. That was their 
grand topic. I listen to these communications 
from the dead, and I might expect that they would 
say something of the mystery and glory of life to 
come, of the spirits of the just made perfect, of 
the New Jerusalem, of the Christ Himself. But 
what is it that I hear instead? The minister who 
talks with his wife learns where he has mislaid 
some papers, or where a gold pencil is hidden, or 
what disposition to make of trinkets in his strong 
box at the bank. Why did this good man’s wife 
not tell him something about the Communion of 
the Saints, about the joys of heaven, or the vision 
of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father? 
And as for the content of the communications 
which come through the ordinary spiritualistic 
media, what greater disrespect and contempt could 
be cast upon the whole idea of future existence! 
What nonsense is rapped out, what balderdash is 
tapped and chirped, what drivel and babble comes 
from them that now are in the unseen! And yet 
this is the rubbish to which Sir Conan Doyle re- 
fers in his introduction to Hills Spiritualism as 
“a fresh departure in religious thought and ex- 


CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 85 


perience such as we have not had for two thou- 
sand years”! 

In England just now there is much ado over 
spiritualism. Great prominence, of course, is 
given to the names of men like Lodge and Doyle. 
But there are still a few Englishmen who have not 
been carried away by the stampede toward the 
land of ghosts. Rudyard Kipling is one of them. 
This is what he has said on the subject: 


“ The road to En-dor is easy to tread 
For Mother or yearning Wife, 
There, it 1s sure, we shall meet our Dead 
As they were even in Ife. 
Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store 
For desolate hearts on the road to En-dor. 


“Whispers shall comfort us out of the dark— 
Hands—ah, God!—that we knew! 
Visions and voices—look and hark! 
Shall prove that our tale is true, 
And that those who have passed to the further 
shore 
May be hailed—at a price—on the road to En-dor. 


* ** * * * * K 


“ Oh, the road to En-dor is the oldest road 

And the craziest road of all! 
Straight it runs to the Witch’s abode, 

As it did in the days of Saul, 
And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store 
For such as go down on the road to En-dor!”’ 


86 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


In the book which Sir Conan Doyle commends 
to readers as the chief work on the subject, Hiil’s 
Spiritualism, there is an account of a spiritualistic 
church service at Bradford, England. Fora Chris- 
tian it makes sad reading. One man gets a warn- 
ing to be careful when he works in a boiler shop 
on Good Friday. “Mrs. Varley” gets a message 
from her boy. Spirit after spirit, young, middle- 
aged and aged, makes its appearance, usually with- 
out any definite communications at all. Then the 
benediction is pronounced. And has Christian 
worship come to this? Where is that great Chris- 
tian word, sin? And our warfare against it, in 
ourselves and inthe world? ‘The punishment upon 
it here and hereafter? And that great remedy for 
sin, the atonement of Jesus Christ, who loved me 
and gave Himself for me? It has vanished into 
thin air. 

Like all the other cults which claim the Bible 
and Christianity for their distorted-religions, spir- 
itualism makes its appeal to Christians who have © 
ceased to believe in their own religion. ‘That there 
are such in great numbers is, and always will be, 
sad indeed. But these are they to whom this cult 
makes its appeal. A Christian who believes in his 
religion has no need of having his faith so but-— 
tressed or reinforced. He walks by faith and not 
by sight. His hope for life to come is based upon 


CAN WE TALK WITH THE DEAD? 87 


faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not upon any evi- 
dence that a meditm can produce. He believes in 
God; he believes in Christ. Therefore, he believes 
in the Life Everlasting... That men should feel the 
need of seeing a form and hearing a voice before 
they can accept the great revelation of Christ as 
to Everlasting Life, is not an evidence of faith at 
all, but a denial of faith. Such persons walk. by 
sight, not by faith, A woman said to me at the 
close of the sermon one Sabbath: “I know that 
the dead live!”’ A Christian BELIEvEs that the 
dead live. You must take your choice. Which 
shall it be? By sight or by faithr 

If this is the way in which we are to take com- 
fort concerning our beloved dead, why did Jesus 
not tellus so? Why did He not put that into His 
incomparable Farewell Address, as we have it in 
the last portion of St. John’s.Gospel? Why did 
He not say, ‘Go to the medium. Ye believe in 
the sorcerer, believe also in life to come,” instead 
of saying, “In my Father’s house are many man- 
sions. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. I 
go to prepare a place for you”? If these spir- 
itualistic phenomena are to be our ground of hope, 
why did not St. Paul, seeking to comfort mourning 
Christians at Thessalonica, commend this practice 
to them? Why did he not conduct a séance and 
let them see for themselves that their dead were 


88 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


safe in the spirit world? Why did he not tell 
them to put their hope in psychic investigation, in- 
stead of in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Why 
did he not tell them how to invoke the spirits, in- 
stead of saying to them those noble words, “ For 
if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even 
so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him. Wherefore comfort one another with these 
words’? 


V 


THE RESURRECTION OF THE 
BODY 


DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA 


In the hour of death, after this hfe’s whim, 
When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow 
dim, 
And pain has exhausted every limb— 
The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him. 


When the will has forgotten the lifelong aim, 
And the mind can only disgrace its fame, 

And a man is uncertain of his own name— 
The power of the Lord shall fill this frame. 


When the last sigh is heaved and the last tear 
shed, 
And the coffin is waiting beside the bed, 
And the widow and child forsake the dead— 
Ihe angel of the Lord shall lift this head. 


For even the purest delight may pall, 
And power must fail and the pride must fall, 
And the love of the dearest friends grow small— 
But the glory of the Lord is all in all. 


(These lines were often on the lips of 
Woodrow Wilson. They were written by 
RicHarp D, BLAcKmoreE, author of 
“ Lorna Doone.’’) 


V 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 


and Arch Streets, Philadelphia, the passer-by 

can see, through the iron railing, the grave of 
one of America’s greatest men and one of the 
world’s most versatile geniuses. If you have made 
a pilgrimage to that quiet acre of the dead, walled 
off from the city’s roar and traffic, as if to comment 
upon the vanity of it all, you will have observed 
that the flat stone over Franklin’s grave bears no 
trace of the epitaph which he composed. It is as 
follows: 


if the old cemetery of Christ Church, at Fifth 


“ Like the cover of an old book, 
Its contents torn out, 
And stripped of tts lettering and gilding, 
Lies here food for worms, 
But the work shall not be lost, 
For it will (as he believes) appear once more 
In a new and more elegant edition, 
Revised and corrected by the Author.” 


Such was Franklin’s statement of the Christian 
doctrine of the resurrection of the body. This 
doctrine has been a part of Christian faith since 


the very beginning. Its most familiar statement 
91 


92 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


is that of the Apostles’ Creed, “ I-believe in the | 
resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” ‘ ) 
“—““Fheard a member of the Presbyterian Church say . 

that when he repeated the Creed he always left out 
the clause, “I believe in the resurrection of the 
body.” One~would gather the impression that 
there are not a few who do likewise. They may 
utter it in mechanical repetition, but it means noth- 
ing at all to them. Besides these who reject the 
doctrine altogether, there are, undoubtedly, a great 
host who are troubled by it. It is to them the 
greatest stumbling-block in the whole list of the 
Christian doctrines. But rejected or accepted, un- 
derstood or misunderstood, disliked or rejoiced in, 
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is an 
integral part.of Christian truth. Christ taught it, 
the apostles taught it, and the Christian Church of 
every age has ever confessed together, “I believe 
in the resurrection of the body and the life ever- 
lasting.” Few would be troubled if the Creed said 
only, “I believe in the life everlasting.” But in 
the Christian faith, these two, the resurrection of 
the body and the life everlasting, are indissolubly 
linked together. 

When St. Paul was preaching to the philosophers 
on Mars Hill, they heard him with all respect until 
he began to talk of the resurrection of the dead. 
That was too much for them. “Some mocked.” 


THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY = 98 


Echoes of that mockery are still heard in the world, 
and even within the Christian Church. Ina recent 
issue of a well-known religious weekly there ap- 
peared an article on quaint epitaphs in the ceme- 
teries. After quoting one of these epitaphs which 
referred to the resurrection, the editor added in a 
parenthetical clause these words: “ Evidently our 
fathers almost without exception believed in a com- 
mon resurrection day when together the dead would 
rise and appear before God.” ‘That explanatory 
clause in the Christian weekly is very significant, 
showing how far popular Christian thought has 
receded from the great affirmation of Christ and 
His apostles. 

To trace the evidences of the existence and the 


development of the belief in the resurrection of — 


the body in the Old Testament is a difficult task. 
Some little comment upon it was made in the chap- 
ter on the Old Testament teaching on immortality. 
For our present purpose the main thing to re- 
member is that when we come to the New Testa- 
ment the doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
is generally accepted, and is taken for granted in 
the teaching of Jesus and His apostles. How true 
this is we may learn from the account in Acts 24 
of Paul’s answer before Felix to the accusation of 
sedition brought by Tertullus, the attorney for the 
high priests at Jerusalem. Here Paul tells Felix 


a 


94 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


that he believes the law and the prophets, and that 
he has hope toward God that there will be a resur- 
rection of the dead, both of the just and the un- 
just, “‘ which they themselves,” he adds, referring 
to his Jewish accusers, “ also allow.” Again, when 
Paul made his plea before Festus and Agrippa, he 
declares that he is accused by the Jews because he 
entertains the hope of the promise of the resurrec- 
tion made to the fathers: “‘ For which hope’s sake, 
King Agrippa, I am accused by the Jews. Why 
should it be thought a thing incredible with you 
that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26: 7, 8). 
Paul was a very skillful pleader, and he attempts 
to free himself from the charge of heresy and se- 
dition by claiming that he was teaching only what 
the religion of the Jews had long taught. In gen- 
eral terms this was true; but, of course, the Phari- 
sees and their colleagues were not persecuting Paul 
because he taught the doctrine of the resurrection 
of the body, but because he taught the resurrection 
of Jesus, and grounded the great hope of the resur- 
rection of the dead upon the resurrection of Jesus. 
This we must grant, even to the Pharisees. But 
Paul’s remarks at both hearings are quite sufficient 
for our present purpose, namely, to show how by 
the time Christianity was established the doctrine 
of the resurrection was generally accepted and as- 
sumed in all discussions as to the future. 


Ne 


THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY = 95 


In the story of the raising of Lazarus we have 
another conclusive proof of the generality of the 
belief in the resurrection of the body. When our 
Lord said to the distressed Martha, ‘ Thy brother 
shall rise again,” Martha at once answered, “1 
know that he shall rise again in the resurrection 
at the last day.” To this common belief in the 
resurrection of the body there was one notable 
' exception, the Sadducees, “ which say there is no 
resurrection.” The very fact that the men who 
held such a belief formed a special class by them- 
selves shows how generally the belief in the resur- 
rection prevailed. 

The teaching of Christ as recorded in the Gospels 
_ assumes,-rather than argues for, the resurrection 
of the body. But there are occasions when, either 
upon His own initiative, or through questions pro- 
pounded to Him, Christ flashed the ray of divine 
light and truth upon this shadow land of the fu- 
ture. When He raised the daughter of the ruler 
of the synagogue, He said to the flute players and 
_ the noise makers, ‘‘ Give place, for the damsel is 
not dead, but sleepeth.”’ But this is a miracle of 
raising the dead. ~The damsel certainly was dead. 
Yet Christ said she was only sleeping. He did not 
mean taking her rest in sleep, but something dif- 
ferent. The implication would seem to be that 
Christ is introducing them to a new thought of 


96 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


death. Who knows but that this may have been 
the motive back of the three miracles of raising 
the dead? In like terms Jesus said when He heard 
of the sickness of Lazarus, “ Our friend Lazarus 
sleepeth, but I go that I may awaken him out of 
sleep. Then»said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, 
he shall do well. Howbeit, Jesus had spoken of 
his death; but they thought that he had spoken of 
taking rest in sleep.” St. Paul uses this same 
term, asleep, “ We shall not all sleep, but we shall 
all be changed.’’ Hence the beautiful usage of 


Christian faith, when we speak of our dead as) 


those who have “ fallen asleep,” or who “ sleep in | 
Jesus.”’ If Jesus was thinking only of the future — 
and continued existence of the spirit, the term 
would have little meaning; but it has the deepest 
suggestion when we think of Christ as looking 
down upon the dead body of the damsel and 
the buried body of Lazarus and saying, “ This 
looks to you like the end; but it is not the end; 
he is only sleeping; and the spirit shall once more 
animate this now lifeless body.” This, of course, 
implies a resurrection, of which the restoration of 
the dead to this life by Christ in the three miracles 
was a picture. 


It was in answer to the foolish question of the © 


Sadducees that Jesus made His only comment upon i 
the nature of the resurrection body. The Sad- 


$ 





THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 97 


ducees asked Him about a woman who had sur- 
vived seven husbands, in that respect almost equal- 
ling some of the celebrities of our own day in the 
field of divorce. Finally, the woman followed her 
seven husbands into the unseen. “In the resur- 
rection, therefore, whose wife shall she be of the 
seven, for they all had her to wife?”’ This stale 
jest of the Sadducees was repeated in substance 
by that high priest of materialism, Haeckel, in his 
Riddle of the Universe, where he wants to know 
whether Catharine of Aragon, Catharine Howard, 
Jane Seymour, Anne Boleyn, or Anne of Cleves 
would be the wife of Henry VIII. in heaven. 
However flippantly the Sadducees may have 
asked the question, Jesus gave it a great answer. 
In this answer there are two things: first, the 
affirmation of the doctrine of the resurrection of 
the body. It was this doctrine that the Sadducees 
denied and ridiculed. He said to them, “As touch- 
ing the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read 
that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, 
‘IT am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob?’ God is not the God of 
the living, but of the dead.” Here our Lord 
plainly declares that in denying the resurrection of 
the body the Sadducees are mistaken, for God 
maintains His relationship with the dead patriarchs 
and they shall live again. The Sadducees denied 


98 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


not only the resurrection, but the life to come in 
any form. Second, Jesus has a word to say about 
the nature of the resurrection body and the resur- 
rection life, reminding the Sadducees that their) — 
question about the much married woman was, after 
all, an irrelevant one, and that marriage, as a phys- 
ical relationship, would not exist in heaven, but 
they shall be as the angels in heaven. 

But some one may ask, What, beside such a © 
comment as this on the nature of the resurrection 
body and the resurrection life, has Jesus con- 
tributed to the doctrine? Before He came, men 
believed in the immortality of the soul and be- 
lieved in the resurrection of the body. What 
then has Christ added? What warrant is there 
for the high claim of St. Paul that Christ 
brought immortality to light in the Gospel? T he 
answer is that Jesus not only taught the doc-, 
trine of the resurrection, but made Himself itst-4 
causative agent and in His own resurrection il- 
lustrated the nature of the resurrection body. 14 

Let us look first at the way in which Jesus made q 

Himself the ground and the cause of the resurrec- a 
tion. Jesus definitely makes belief in Him the con- 
dition and the power of the resurrection. “ For \| 
this is the will of my Father, that every one that | 
beholdeth. the Son and believeth on him should 
have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the 





THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 99 


last day”’ (John 6: 40). He said the same thing 
to Martha. He had assured her that her brother 
would rise again. Martha replied, “1 know that 
he will rise again in the resurrection at the last 
day.” Then it was Jesus uttered His great say- 
ing, “I am the resurrection and the life; he that 
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me 
shall never die. Believest thou this?” Martha 
already believed in the resurrection of the body, 
but now she can relate that belief to Jesus. It is 
He who raises the dead who believe in Him. 

The full meaning of the connection between 
faith in Christ and the resurrection of believers 
could not be made clear to Martha, or to any one 
else, until Christ Himself had risen from the dead. 
Then with what a thrill Martha must have remem- 
bered that saying of Jesus, “ I am.the. resurrection 
and the life”! We know that during the forty 
days between His resurrection and His ascension 
our Lord frequently appeared to His disciples and 
spoke with them about the “ things concerning the 
kingdom of God.” ‘The definiteness of the mes- 
sage which the apostles preached after the ascen- 
sion is no doubt related to the careful instruction 
of those forty days. We have a few echoes of 
that teaching recorded in St. Luke’s account. of 
the resurrection appearance of Jesus to the two on 


100 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


the way to Emmaus, and again to the disciples at 


Jerusalem. The thing emphasized is His atone- 
ment and resurrection, and the Gospel founded 
upon these facts. Whether He added a word about 
/His resurrection body and how in the resurrection 
| they would be like Him, we do not know. What 
| we do know is that He left them in great peace 
\and satisfaction of mind. 

If the resurrection of Christ is the ground and 
pledge of our own resurrection, it is also our only 
clue, so far as manifestation or illustration is con- 
cerned, of the nature of the resurrection body. It 
is very important to remember that in the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus we are contemplating the resurrection 


of one who assumed, and has never relinquished, 


our humanity. It was not God who was raised 


hy 
HTN SEA ei 


from the dead, but the God-Man. Christ’s identity 
with man in the days of His humiliation is paral- 
lelled by a like identity in the resurrection. His 
resurrection body, therefore, is the norm of our 
own resurrection. 

This similarity is definitely affirmed by both St. 
John and St. Paul. St. John is willing to leave the 
whole future to God’s boundless love, and disclaims 
any knowledge as to the nature of the life in 
heaven: “‘ Behold what manner of love the Father 
hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the 
sons of God. ... . Beloved, now are we the 


ee ee 





THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 101 


sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be.” Then he qualifies this confession of 
ignorance by his great statement concerning the 
general principle of that life to come: “ But we | 
know that when he shall appear, we shall be like 
him; for we shall see him as he is”? (1 John 
Beas). 

St. Paul states the same idea, but in a beautiful 
and suggestive metaphor, when he says: “ But now 
is Christ risen from the dead and become the first- 
fruits of them that slept” (1 Cor. 15:20). The 
first blade that appears above the earth 1s the proph- 
ecy and the norm of the whole crop which is to 
follow. Or, if we apply his figure to the harvest, 
the first garnered sheaves are a model of all that 
follows. Out of death comes the harvest of eternal 
life, of bodies over which death shall have no do- 
minion. The first to appear was Christ, and His 
appearing not only convinces us that others shall 
follow, but that they shall be like Him. St. Paul’s 
marvellous combination of logic and imagination 
never shows to better advantage than in this winged 
metaphor. 

But one might ask, How can Paul call Christ 
the “firstfruits of them that slept,” when we are 
told in the Scriptures of the calling back from the 
dead of several persons in the Old Testament, and 
at least three during the life of Jesus? ‘The an- 


102 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


swer is that those so-called “‘ resurrections ’ were 
not resurrections at all in the sense that Jesus rose 
from the dead, or in the sense that His believers 
shall rise from the dead, for the dead who were 
raised by the prophets, and the three who were 
called back to-life by Christ were merely recalled 


to this present life; they were not introduced to \ 
the life of the resurrection, and in no proper sense | 


were “children of the resurrection.” 

But if the resurrection body of Jesus is the norm 
of our own resurrection, what do we learn from 
the risen Jesus? Not much by way of actual 
knowledge, but a great deal by way of suggestion 
and intimation. In their earthly minds and bodies 
the disciples could not comprehend the power and 
glory of the resurrection body of Jesus. When 
He did appear unto them it was in the form that 
they had known Him and seen Him, and He even 
condescended_ to eat with them, and on one occa- 
sion displayed His wounds to Thomas, and on an- 
other, asked the disciples who thought that He was 
a ghost, to touch Him and feel Him. Yet we feel, 
as we read these narratives, that these manifesta- 
tions, although they prove the reality of the resur- 
rection, and the connection between the body that 
was laid in the tomb and the body that came out 
of the tomb, do not reveal in any degree the splen- 
dour of the body of the resurrection, Although a 


sr 


ee _~*, ane 


THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 108 


body that could be touched, and which could con- 
descend to partake of bread and fish, it was also 
a body that could change its form of manifestation, 
and that could pass through closed doors, and could 
quickly transport itself from one place to a place 
far distant. The same, and yet not the same. 
However, we must not emphasize too much the 
fact that the resurrection body of Christ could ap- 
pear and reappear, for before His death, when oc- 
casion demanded, He could become. invisible, as at 
Nazareth, when the mob were about to cast Him 
down headlong from the brow of the hill, He 
passed through the midst of them and went His 
way. Again, when He walked on the sea, His 
body must have assumed its more than corporeal 
qualities. Always the body of Christ had the pos- 
sibilities of omnipotence and infinity. His glory 
on the mount of transfiguration may also be re- 
garded as in a sense a prophecy, or foregleam, of 
His glory in the resurrection. 

However little of the splendours of the resurrec- 
tion body, and the powers of the world to come, 
Christ exhibited to His friends in the resurrection, 
He left behind Him, in the minds of the disciples, 
and in our minds to-day as we read these noble 
narratives of His appearances, an impression of 
majesty and awe. He is moving along the margin 
between the earthly and the heavenly life, between 


104 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


the life which now is and the life which is to come, 
and not always can we follow Him or clearly dis- 
cern Him. But always He moves with the majes- 
tic tread of Him who has the keys of death and 
hell, and is alive forevermore. And we shall be 
like Him! In-some way, to some degree, we shall 
share in the power and splendour of that resurrec- 
tion body of Christ, for He shall “ change our vile 
body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glori- 
ous body, according to the working whereby he is 
able to subdue all things unto himself.” 


See 


ee 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE 
UNJUST 


Lo, He comes with clouds descending, 
Once for favoured sinners slain! 
Thousand, thousand saints attending 
Swell the triumph of His train: 
Hallelujah! 
God appears, on earth to reign. 


Every eye shall now behold Him, 
Robed in dreadful majesty; 
Those who set at nought and sold Him, 
Pierced and nailed Him to the tree, 
Deeply wailing, 
Shall the true Messiah see. 


Every island, sea, and mountain, 
Heaven and earth shall flee away; 
All who hate Him, must, confounded, 
Hear the trump proclaim the day; 

Come to judgment! 
Come to judgment, come away! 


—CHARLES WESLEY and JOHN CENNICK. 


VI 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE UNJUST 


the resurrection of the body is a true doctrine 

of the Christian faith. It is not to be re- 
duced to a mere name for the belief in the continued 
existence of the spirit after death, nor is it to be 
confused with the state of existence into which 
the spirit passes at death. Decisively, the doctrine 
of the resurrection of the body has to do with the 
body. Otherwise there would be no sense in 
speaking of a resurrection, for that only can be 
raised which has been buried in the grave. Mov- 
ing out into this territory beyond the confines of 
this present life, we are at once in a land of fog 
and mist and uncertainty, not indeed to those who 
have actually gone thither, but to us who by 
thought and faith try to follow them and envisage 
their life. 

But these difficulties which press upon us from 
every quarter, when we come to speak of the resur- 
rection, must not tempt us to throw over in despair 
the whole doctrine, for, as we have seen, it was 
taught by Jesus, demonstrated by Him, and is an 


integral portion of Christian doctrine. Dr. J. A. 
107 


N our discussion thus far we have seen how 


108 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


Selbie puts the case well when He writes: “The 
extenuation of the Christian doctrine of the resur- 
rection of the dead into a natural or conferred 
immortality of the soul to avoid perplexities arising 
from the limitation of our knowledge evacuates | 
the force of St. Paul’s teaching as to the ideal 
sanctity of the human body (1 Cor. 6:14) and 
sacrifices the moral value of a sense of its high 
destiny. Again, it breaks up the Pauline concep- 
tion of man as body, soul and spirit, all capable of 
being preserved entire without blame (1 Thess. 
5:23). Even if we hesitate to accept St. Paul’s 
psychology we must confess that the only self 
which we know is a self constituted of body as well 
as of soul. St. Paul’s expression of Christian 
hope is not deliverance from the body, but redemp- — 
tion of the body. The redemption of the body is 
the last stage in the great process of adoption by 
which we are made sons of God.” 

This much, then, is certain: the resurrection of 
the body is taught and there is also something told 
us about the nature of the resurrection body. But 
what of the impenitent and the wicked, the non- 
Christian dead? The New Testament teaching 
seems to relate only to the resurrection of the 
Christian dead. It must be perfectly clear to the 
reader that in the great passage in First Corin- 
thians St. Paul has in mind the resurrection body of 


RESURRECTION OF THE UNJUST 109 


the believer. Obviously it would be out of place 
to speak-of the wicked as bearing the image of 
the heavenly, or being raised in glory and in power. 
The same holds true of the passage in Second 
Corinthians 5, where Paul speaks of his house from 
heaven. Whether he refers there to the resurrec- 
tion body or to the bliss of the departed saint, 
nothing that he says can apply to the wicked and 
the impenitent. 

The fact is that this whole subject of the fate 
of the unbeliever is left in the shadow. Some of 
the greatest utterances in the New Testament re- 
late to the resurrection of the believing dead, but 
almost nothing is said or taught about the unbe- 
lieving dead. Yet logically, we must ask ourselves 
about them. Are they to be raised up? And if 
so, with what body do they come? 

In considering these questions, the first conclu- 
sion at which we arrive is that the Bible certainly 
teaches the resurrection of the wicked as well as 
the resurrection of the believer. The following 
passages show this: “ Many of them that sleep in 
the dust of the earth shall awake, some to ever- 
lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as 
the brightness of the firmament and they that turn 
many to righteousness as the stars forever and 
ever” (Dan. 12:2, 3). And they “shall come 


110 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrec- | 
tion of life, and they that have done evil, unto the | 
resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29). “And 


have hope toward God, which they themselves also 
allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, 
both of the just and unjust’ (Acts 24: 15). 

But if there be a resurrection of the wicked, it 
must be for a different purpose and with a dif- 
ferent body than the resurrection of the believers. 
There 1s some hint at that difference in Christ’s 
lesson for guests and entertainment as recorded 
in Luke 14: 12-14: “ Then said he also to him that 
bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, 
call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy 
kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also 
bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. 
But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the 
maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be 
blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou 
shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the 
just.” The inference would be that the resurrec- 
tion of the just is something different from the 
resurrection of the unjust. 


Again, in Luke 20: 35, 36, where Christ makes 


i 


His extended comment on the foolish query of the | 


Sadducees about the seven times married woman, 
the resurrection is associated with a certain kind 


of life and character. ‘‘' They which shall be ac- 


RESURRECTION OF THE UNJUST 111 


counted worthy to obtain that world, and the resur- 
rection from the dead, neither marry nor are given 
in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for 
they are equal unto the angels; and are the chil- 
dren of God, being the children of the resurrec- 
tion.” When Christ speaks about those who have 
been raised up as the sons of God, and as the chil- 
dren of the resurrection, it is plain that He is not 
speaking of the wicked and the unbeliever. This 
distinction in the two resurrections is confirmed 
by the saying of Jesus in John 5: 29,° already 
quoted: And they “shall come forth, they that 
have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and 
they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of 
damnation.” This distinction is further confirmed 
by St. Paul’s reference in First Thessalonians 
4; 14, 16, to the “ dead in Christ’: “ For if we 
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so 
them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him. . . . For the Lord himself shall descend 
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the 
archangel, and with the trump of God: and the 
dead in Christ shall rise first.” 

In the Epistle to the Philippians (3:10, 11), 
Paul expresses the earnest hope that he may share 
in the resurrection: “ That I may know-him, and 
the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of 
his sufferings, being made conformable unto his 


112 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


death. If by any means I might attain unto the 
resurrection of the dead.” If Paul so yearned. 
for the resurrection of the dead, it must have been| 
something more than a resurrection in which all 
men shared alike. The resurrection in which the 
Christian dead share is declared to be an inherit- 
ance through faith in Christ: “ This is the Fa- 
ther’s will which hath sent me, that of all which 
he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should 
raise it up again at the last day. And this is the 
will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth 
the Son, and believeth on him, may have ever- 
lasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day. 

No man can come to me except the Fa- 
ther which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise 
him up at the last day. . . . Whoso eateth 
my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, 
and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 
6: 39-54). Here, four times in succession, Christ 
says that the resurrection will be His gift to those 
who followed Him and believed in Him in this 
world. Yet the wicked dead, too, are to be raised; 
all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and 
come forth. 

The fact that to the Christian the resurrection 
is God’s great seal and benediction is affirmed by 
St. Paul also in Romans 8: 10-21: “If Christ be 
in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the 


RESURRECTION OF THE UNJUST 113 


Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the 
Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead 
dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the 
dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his 
Spirit that dwelleth in you. . . . For the ear- 
nest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 
manifestation of the sons of God. 2. . Be- 
cause the creature itself also shall be delivered from 
the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty 
of the children of God.” 

We have seen, then, that the great body of the 
New Testament teaching as to the resurrection of 
the body assumes for the subject of its application 
the Christian dead, and that such a resurrection is 
God’s great gift to those who live and believe in 

Jesus Christ. Some go much further than this 
and teach what is called conditional immortality, 
that is, that life to come is a gift bestowed only 
upon those who believe in Christ. This would get 
rid of the difficulty of the resurrection of the 
wicked, but it would also get rid of inescapable 
declarations and inferences of the New Testament 
which declare that the wicked too are to be raised; 
for we must all stand before the judgment seat of 
Christ. In addition to the passages I have cited 
above as teaching that the wicked too will be raised 
up, there is the great judgment passage of Christ in 
Matthew 25. ‘The judgments that He there pro- 


114 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


nounces upon the wicked certainly imply their res- 
urrection from the dead. 

Since there is to be a resurrection of the just 
and a resurrection of the unjust, some infer that 
the two resurrections will be separated in time,— 
first, a resurrection of the believers at the coming 
of the Lord, and after that, the resurrection of 
the wicked, or the general resurrection. Some find 
a hint of this separation in First Corinthians 
15: 23-26: “ They that are Christ’s at his coming. 
Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered 
up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when 
he shall have put down all rule and all authority 
and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all 
enemies under his feet.” The two events sepa- 
rated here seem to be the resurrection of them that 
are Christ’s at His coming and the final victory 
over evil. Between the two events Christ 
reigns. 

The passage in First Thessalonians 4: 16, “ and 
the dead in Christ shall rise first,’ does not neces- 
sarily refer to a subsequent resurrection, as if it 
meant to say first the Christian dead, and then, 
long afterward, the unbelieving dead will be 
raised, for “first” is put in correlation with the 
“then” which follows: “’Then we which are alive 
and remain shall be caught up together with them 
in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so 


RESURRECTION OF THE UNJUST 115 


shall we ever be with the Lord.” The meaning 
of “first” and “then” as so used in the passage 
would be this: First, the Christian dead are raised, 
and then, following their resurrection, the believers 
who are still alive at Christ’s second coming will 
be caught up. The passage does not necessarily 
teach a separation in the time of the two resurrec- 
tions, neither is there anything in it which forbids 
such a separation. 

Those who are sure that the two events, the two 
resurrections, are separated by a lapse of time, 
make their appeal to the celebrated passage in the 
Apocalypse, Revelation 20:4, 5: “And I saw 
thrones and théy sat upon them, and judgment was 
given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that 
were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for 
the word of God, and which had not worshipped 
the beast, neither his image, neither had received 
his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; 
and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand 
years. But the rest of the dead lived not again 
until the thousand years were finished. ‘This is 
the first resurrection.” 

Almost any interpretation of this passage comes 
up against great difficulties. Taken literally, it 
does not say that all believers are raised at this 
first resurrection, but the martyrs, the souls of them 
that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus. But 


116 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


it certainly does emphasize the element of judg- 
ment in the resurrection of the wicked. 

Views on these difficult matters, fortunately, are 
not necessary to salvation and hope; and what- 
ever opinion is held, let him who holds it remem- 
ber that here we see through the glass darkly. 
“ Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways: And 
how small a whisper do we hear of him!” But 
we are taught enough. If the resurrection of the 
wicked is but rarely mentioned, let that very si- 
lence concerning it warn us from sharing in such a 
resurrection, the resurrection of condemnation, to 
everlasting shame and contempt. Let us rather, 
as Paul said he did, count all things to be loss, 
“that I may know him and the power of his resur- 
rection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being 
made conformable unto his death; if by any means 
I may attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” 


Vit 


BETWEEN DEATH AND THE 
RESURRECTION 


_ ee 4 
ee Ee a 


“A shadow fits before me, a 
Not thou, but hke to thee. 
Ah, Christ, that it were possible : 


For one short hour to see 
The souls we loved, that they might tell us 
What and where they be!” 


—TENNYSON, in “ Maud.” 


“ Spirits departed ye are still, 
And thoughts of you our lonely hours will fill, 
As gales wake from the harp a language not their — 
Own ; 
Or airs autumnal raise a momentary moan, 
Till all the soul to thoughts of you is sighing, 
And every chord that slept in sadness stern replying, 
Where are ye now in regions blest, 
On shores of land unknown, in silence and at rest?” 


TT Oe a ee ee 


—ANON. 





Vil 


BETWEEN DEATH AND THE 
RESURRECTION 


CCORDING to the teaching of the New 
A Testament, the Christian believer enters 
into the full glory of eternal life at the 
resurrection. But ages have elapsed since Chris- 
tian believers like Paul and Peter and John died, 
and many more ages may pass away before Christ 
will come to judge the quick and the dead. What 
is the condition of these believing dead? Are they 
in a state of partial glory? Are they in a state of 
unconscious existence, out of which they will be 
raised at the last day? Or are they in a state of 
discipline and purification? Let us consider now 
the various answers which have been given to these 
questions. | 
The Scriptures sometimes speak of death as a 
sleep. It is said of the patriarchs and the ancient 
kings that they slept with their fathers. Paul says 
of David that after he had served his own genera- 
tion by the will of God, he fell on sleep. The 
Psalmist prayed, “ Lighten mine eyes lest I sleep 
the sleep of death.” Christ said of Lazarus, “ Our 
friend Lazarus sleepeth.” St. Paul frequently re- 


fers to death as a sleep. ‘his frequent reference 
119 


120 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


to death as a sleep has been taken by some fo mean 
that the whole being of man, body and soul, is in 
a state of unconsciousness during the time between 
death and the resurrection. The dead have not 
been annihilated, but they know nothing; “ there 
is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom 
in the grave whither thou goest.” ‘This doctrine, 
called the Sleep of the Soul, appears from time 
to time in church history and was controverted 
and repudiated by some of the Reformers. The 
Westminster Standards definitely deny it, saying of 
the departed, they neither die nor sleep. 

It will readily be seen how men would come to 
speak of death as a sleep. Death looks like sleep; 
the dead appear to be sleeping. No word so fitly 
describes the outward appearance of death as sleep. 
But it is one thing to refer to death under the 
metaphor of sleep, and quite another thing to say 
that the soul of man at death passes into a state 
like that of sleep. Even if we were to take those 
passages in the Bible which speak of the dead as 
“asleep” with the utmost literality, it would not 
mean absolute unconsciousness, for we know how 
active the mind is even when we have been sleep- 
ing: 

“To die, to sleep: 


To sleep; perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub: 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” 


DEATH AND THE RESURRECTION 121 


The Psalmist expressed his confidence in the fu- 
ture by saying, “Thou shalt guide me with thy 
counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.” That 
would seem to express the hope that after death 
came not unconscious existence, but a life of glory 
in the presence of God. ‘The emergence of Moses 
and Elijah in this life and their conversing with 
Jesus on the mount of transfiguration can hardly 
be fitted into the doctrine of the sleep of the soul, 
for they manifest the keenest intelligence and con- 
sciousness. However one takes the piercing story 
of Dives and Lazarus, it certainly teaches anything 
but that in death we know nothing, for the rich 
man and Lazarus are both alive and conscious. 

In the Book of Revelation a blessing is pro- 
nounced upon the dead who die in the Lord: 
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from 
henceforth.” The state thus extolled must be any- 
thing but a death-like slumber. Finally, we have 
that great saying of Jesus to the penitent thief, 
“To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” The 
plain inference is that whether the thief passed at 
once into heaven or into some intermediate state, 
he would be at least in a state of conscious happi- 
ness. : 

Considerably in advance of the doctrine of the 
sleep of the soul, a doctrine both unseriptural and 
without comfort, is the belief in what is called the 


122 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


Intermediate State. This state is spoken of as 
Paradise, not as high and blessed as heaven, but 
still a state of safety and peace preparatory to the 
bliss of heaven. One argument brought forward 
for this Intermediate State is the fact that in the 
Bible the rewards of heaven and the punishments 
of hell follow the general judgment, intimating that 
the final state cannot be entered until after the 
resurrection and the judgment. But Christ’s para- 
ble of the rich man and Lazarus would not seem 
to indicate any long period between death and the 
final state of blessedness or punishment. 

To St. Paul the great themes of life after death 
were the resurrection, the judgment and heaven. 
It was the great consummation which captured his 
enthusiasm, and not the “in between.” He cen- 
ters his whole thought upon the final glory of the 
believer in heaven. But the very fact that the be- 
liever is to be ‘‘ clothed upon ” with his house from 
heaven, the body of the resurrection, makes it in- 
evitable that we should ask questions about the 
present state of the believing dead. If the final 
and complete glory is not entered into until the 
resurrection, what is their condition now? 

The question is one that cannot be answered 
easily. On the one hand, we shrink from think- 
ing that a soul which has been redeemed-through 
faith in Jesus Christ must tarry for long-cons 


a 


DEATH AND THE RESURRECTION 1238 


before entering into the full inheritance. of the 
saints. It would seem almost to cast some shadow 
of insufficiency upon the redeeming work of Christ. 
On the other hand, the divine consummation for 
the believer is the body of the resurrection, not 
inherited until the last great day. For myself, I 
do not like to think of those whom I have loved 
and lost as now in a state preparatory to heaven. 
There is some natural logic in the Roman Catholic 
idea that even the faithful and believing soul needs 
a process of discipline and purification before it is 
fit for the presence of God Himself. It does in- 
deed need such a process. But that process is the 
great redeeming and purifying work of Christ on 
the Cross, and not the cleansing fires of purgatory. 

As to the difference between what is called Para- 
dise-and. Heaven, there does not appear to be much 
testimony in the Scriptures. But of this, at least, 
we can be sure, that Paradise is a state free from — 
the curse and stain of sin. When Paul said that 
he was caught up into Paradise and heard un- 
speakable words, which-it is not lawful for a man 
to utter, and when our Lord said to the dying thief, 
“To-day shalt thou be with me in-Paradise,” the 
Paradise to which they referred must be a state 
of purity and happiness...Our conclusion then is 
that while we recognize the New Testament teach- 
ing that the body of the resurrection is not be- 


124 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


stowed upon the believer until the last day, and 
that to inherit the resurrection body is to enter into 
the final reward of faith in Christ, still, we shall 
not think of our beloved and believing dead as now 
in any condition but one of glory and peace and 
happiness. 

The angels in heaven are declared to be “ minis- 
tering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who 
shall be heirs of salvation.”” When we try to 
follow the redeemed children of God in their ex- 
istence between death and the general resurrection, 
we wonder if, since they are the elect of God, they 
have some high task to perform as discarnate souls. 
If so, what higher ministry than to befriend the 
~ souls of men in this present life? We like to think 
that our loved ones are aware of the events of our 
life, and in our moments of trial or pain we even 
comfort ourselves with the thought that we have 
their help and sympathy. No man who has had 
the inestimable blessing of the prayers of pious 
parents cares to think that that ministry comes to 
an end at death. There is no reason why we 
should pray for them, save as prayer is an exalted 
kind of fellowship, but every reason why they 
should pray for us. ‘The pathetic inscriptions in 
the Catacombs often give expression to this-simple 
and yet profound yearning of mourning hearts, for 
many of the inscriptions come to a close by im- 
ploring the departed to pray for the living. If the 
prayers of the righteous avail much in time, there 


DEATH AND THE RESURRECTION 125 


is no good reason why the prayers of the righteous ~— 


should not continue to avail when uttered in that 
world where all is prayer and praise. But, what- 
ever their estate, we know that they are blessed. 


“We feebly struggle; they in glory shine.” 


Outside of the Scriptures, the rich music of 
the Shorter Catechism still remains the greatest ut- 
terance on this subject of the present and the final 
state of our dead: “ The souls of believers are at 


their death made perfect in holiness and do imme- » 
diately pass into glory, and their bodies being still | 
united to Christ, do rest in their graves until the | 


resurrection. At the resurrection, believers being 
raised up in glory shall be openly acknowledged 
and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made 
perfectly blessed to the full enjoying of God to all 
eternity.” 

At the end of his long roll-call of the heroes of 
faith, from Abel down to the latest martyr, the 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews invites his 
fellow-disciples to follow in their footsteps, say- 
ing, ‘Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, : 
let us run with patience the race that is set before 
us.” 
nesses” is that they who overcame through faith 
in past times, watch with an eager sympathy the 
struggles of those who are still in this world. 

Dives in his distress in the world of the dead 


ee 


The natural interpretation of “ cloud of wit- >. | 


- 126 PUTTING ON IMMORALITY 


remembered his five brethren and besought Abra- 
ham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn them, 
“lest they also come into this place of torment.” 
Oh, if the men who have lived in sin and died in 
unbelief could send back a message to their friends 
living the same kind of lives in this world, what 
a message it would be! It would ring with en- 
treaty and warning, lest the living should share 
the fate of the dead. 

On the other hand, could the blessed dead send 
their messages back to us, they would speak of the 
joy and bliss which now are theirs, and would 
encourage us ever to seek first the Kingdom of 
God, ever to be faithful to Christ, to count all 
things to be loss for the sake of our souls, that we 
might share with them the inheritance, incor- 
ruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, re- 
served in heaven for all those who have overcome 
through the blood of the Lamb: 


“ Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve, 
And press with vigor on; 
A heavenly race demands thy zeal, 
And an immortal crown. 


“A cloud of witnesses around 
Hold thee in full survey; 
Forget the steps already trod, 
And onward urge thy way.” 


VIil 
THE LAST JUDGMENT 


“Tt is the face of the Incarnate God 
Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain; 
And yet the memory which it leaves will be 
A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound; 


When, then (if such thy lot), thou see’st thy Judge, 
The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart 

All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts, 

Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him, 
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him, 
That one so sweet should e’er have placed Himself 
At disadvantage such, as to be used 

So vilely by a being vile as thee. 

There is a piercing in His pensive eyes 

Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee, 
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself ; for, though 
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned, 
As never didst thou feel; and wilt desire 

To slink away, and hide thee from His sight; 
And yet wilt have a longing, aye to dwell 

Within the beauty of His countenance.” 


—CARDINAL Newman, “ Dream of Gerontius,” 


VIII 
THE LAST JUDGMENT 


f “HERE are three ideas which are common.’ 
to all men: that there is a God; that man) 
lives after death; that he will be-judged. 

Man’s expectation of a judgment arises from the 

moral constitution of his nature. A voice of com- 

mandment speaks in his soul—a “Thou Shalt,” 
and a “ Thou Shalt Not.” The belief in judg- 
ment to come is but an echo of conscience. Man 
is the accountable creature. Strip him of this qual- 
ity and he descends to the brutes of the field. Just 
as man without moral accountability, and there- 
fore not subject to a judgment, ceases to be man 
and becomes brute, so a God who is not a Judge 
ceases to be God. He is divested of all moral excel- 
lence. Thus it is that in the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures God is constantly referred to as the God of 
judgment. “ Our God shall come and shall not keep 
silence’ (Psa. 50: 3); “ He shall judge the world 
with righteousness and the people with his truth” 

(Psa. 96: 13); “ Righteousness and judgment are 

the habitation of his throne” (Psa. 97:2). If 

you take away from God the attribute of judging, 


the throne of His majesty collapses. A belief in 
129 


130 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


God, then, and a belief in judgment are insepara- 
ble. 

For the sake of clearness, we shall ask ourselves, 
first, When is the Judgment? and second, What is 
the Judgment? 


Il. When is the Judgment? 

It is a future judgment. ‘This means that it is 
distinct from the judgment that men meet in this 
life. It is often said that men suffer for their 
sins in this life. ‘The pangs of conscience and re- 
/morse are, indeed, with some men very terrible. 
Our punishment is what we are. ‘This has an ele- 
ment of truth in it and has led men to think that 
the Biblical references to a judgment in the future 
are only symbolical descriptions of a process now 
going on beneath the breast of every man. In the 
words of Professor Momerie, “ The mind of man 
is the creator’s Judgment Seat. Everything we do 
carries with it its own immediate retribution. The 
judgments of God are continuous, not catastrophic. 
They are neither more nor less than the reaction 
of our conduct upon ourselves,” If this be true, 
of course, there is no need, and therefore no likeli- 
hood, of a future judgment, unless men are to go 
on living just as they have been living here. But 
is it true? Does everything we do carry with it 
immediate retribution? If men are being pun- 


THE LAST JUDGMENT 131 


ished all the time in this life, do they themselves 
know that they are being judged and punished? 
It is impossible to believe such a thing. 

Nothing could be plainer than that some men 
suffer no immediate consequences of their mis- 
deeds, either in mind or in body. We speak of 
conscience, but it is the righteous, the Christian 
man who suffers most from thé pangs of con- 
science, whereas the hard-hearted, cruel, dishonest, 
murderous or lecherous wretch may not suffer at 
all. The history of men and nations does afford 
many striking instances of punishment following 
upon transgression. But nothing could be more 
evident than that the universal, immediate and 
visible punishment of evil in time is not a part of 
God’s plan for the world. But the Judge of all 
the earth must do right. God must judge, and 
therefore there must be judgment hereafter. Our 
hearts long for some greater and more unquestion- 
able unveiling of the pillars of God’s throne than 
the history of the world affords. 

Those great masterpieces of literature whose 
theme is the reaction of judgment and which show 
to us the evil-doer discovered, found guilty and 
punished, do not describe the universal condition 
in this world: they only describe in time what must 
take place hereafter. Are we to think that Nero 
and St. Paul, Jezebel and the Virgin Mary, had 


182 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


all the rewards and all the punishments which God 
will appoint in this life, and that in the life to 
come they will fare alike? Every nobler instinct 
of man affirms that if there is a process of judg- 
ment in God’s plan it must work, not only partially 
and temporally and secretly in this life, but here- 
after. 

“In the corrupted currents of this world 
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, 
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself 
Buys out the law; but ’tis not so above; 

There is no shuffling, there the action hes 
In its true nature and we ourselves compell’d 


Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults 
To give in evidence.” 


It is a definite event, a fixed period of time in the / 
future. It is the Day of the Lord. Paul told the | 


Athenians that God appointed-a@ time in which He 
will judge the world with righteousness_by the 
Man whom He_hath chosen. ‘The time of the 
judgment i 1S related to other events in such a way 
as makes it impossible to think that the judgment 
is a long process of the future. The effects of the 
judgment are indeed going on forever, but not the 
judgment itself. In the parable of the tares, Jesus 
said, “ Let both grow together until the harvest. 

The harvest is the end of the world; and 
the reapers are the angels. . . . So shall it be 


Ms 
| 
4 


in the end of this world. The Son of man shall. 


THE LAST JUDGMENT 133 


send forth his angels, and they shall gather out 
of his kingdom all things that~offend, and them 
which do iniquity’ (Matt. 138: 30, 39-41). St. 
Paul said, “ I know whom I have believed and am - 
persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have | 
committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. | 
1:12). Passages like these indicate not a pro- 
tracted dispensation but a limited period. More- 
over, the day of judgment is connected with other 
events which cannot by their very nature be age- 
long processes. ‘These are, the appearing of Christ, 
the resurrection of the dead, and the end of the 
world. I do not insist that it is a day of twenty- 
four hours, but a definite period, limited in time, 
a turning-point in the affairs of the human species, 
a winding up of man’s history, an end to the age 
of grace and repentance. Men may object to such 
a catastrophic happening and sudden intervention. 
But what is the alternative? The alternative is 
that human affairs are to ebb and flow forever as 
they do at the present time. This is inconceivable. 
The time of the judgment is uncertain, but is 
connected with the Resurrection and the Second — 
Coming of Christ. The judgment-is the last of a A 
trinity of grand events-at the end of the world. — 
The first of these is the second advent of Christ, | 
the second the resurrection of the ‘dead, and the 
third the general judgment and the final ‘separa- 


1384 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


tion of the good from the evil. In the Apostles’ 
Creed we confess, “‘ From thence He shall come 
again to judge both the quick and the dead.” In 
the parable of the wheat and the tares the final 
separation between the good and the evil 1s to take 
place at the end of the world when the Son of man 
shall send forth His angels to sever the wicked 
from among the just. ‘‘ The Son of man shall 
come in the glory of his Father with his angels; 
and then he shall reward. every man according to 
his works” (Matt. 16:27). “ When the Son of 
man shall come in his glory . . . before him 
shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate 
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his 
sheep from the goats” (Matt. 25:31, 32). 
“Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord 
come, who both will bring to light the hidden things 
of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels 
of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise 
of God” (1 Cor. 4:5). “The Lord Jesus shall 
be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, 
in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know 
not God” (2 Thess. 1:7, 8). ‘ The Lord Jesus 
Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at 
his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:1). ‘ Marvel not at 
this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that 
are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall 
come forth; they that have done good, unto the 


EEE ee eee eee ee ee ee ee eee 


ee 


THE LAST JUDGMENT 135 


resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, 
unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5: 28, 
29). “The dead were judged out of those things 
which were written in the books, according to their 
works. And the sea gave up the dead which were 
in it: and death and hell delivered up the dead 
which were in them” (Rev. 20: 12, 18). 

These three events, the Second Coming of 
Christ, the Resurrection, and the Judgment, are 
linked together in the Scriptures. The Resurrec- 
tion and the Judgment are sequels to the Second 
Coming of Christ, and since we do not-know when 
that will be we do not know when the judgment ' 

_will be. But that it will come is as sure as the — 
coming of Christ. ‘The present age and dispensa- | 
tion of Divine grace comes to a close at the judg- 
ment. Then men receive their final destiny of 
happiness or woe. 


Il. What is the Judgment? 

The subjects of the judgment are to be men and 
angels. The evil angels are spoken of as delivered 
“into chains of darkness, to be reserved tinto-judg-— 
ment” (2 Pet. 2:4). The evil spirits are repre- 
sented in the Gospels as saying to Jesus, “Art thou 
come hither to torment us before the time?.”. 
(Matt. 8: 29). | ! 

But in the Scriptures, those most frequently” 


136 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


mentioned as the subjects of judgment are-men. 
“ He shall judge the quick and the dead,” all who 
are alive on the earth at the coming of Christ and 
all the generations that have perished, or that shall 
yet perish before He comes. “I saw the dead, 
small and great, stand before God” (Rev. 20: 12). 
The scene is too tremendous even for the imagina- 
tion. ‘The small and the great, all ranks, will be 
there, reduced to the same level before the great 
white throne. On the field of Gettysburg, a Union’ 
officer bent over a desperately wounded Confed-! 
erate and asked him what his rank was. “N ever) 
mind,’ said the dying officer, “I shall soon be) 
where there is no rank.’’ King and peasant, phi- 
losopher and boor, millionaire and beggar, by a 
common moral interest shall stand together on 
the same footing. Writing in The Spectator, Num-_ 
ber 26, on Westminster Abbey, Addison said: 
“When I see kings lying by those who deposed 
them, when I consider holy men that divided the 
world with their contests and disputes placed side 
by side, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on 
the little competitions, factions and debates of man- 
kind. When I read the several dates on the tombs, 
of some that died yesterday and some six hundred 
years ago, I consider that great day when we shall 
all of us be contemporaries and make our appear- 
ance together.” 


THE LAST JUDGMENT 137 


“You are fond of spectacles!” cried the stern: 
Tertullian. ‘Expect the greatest of all spectacles, _ 
the last and eternal judgment of the.universe! ” \ 
Yes, what a spectacle it will be! The quick and © 
the dead! All nations shall be gathered before 
Him, the nations of the living, the multitudinous 
nations of the dead. The graves shall be opened 
and send forth their dim host; and the sea shall 
give up its dead to be judged. All the children of 
Adam will stand in serried ranks to hear their final 
sentence. Our dazed and staggered minds ask 
“How?” How can this inconceivable host be 
gathered together at one_time and at_one~place? 
That we leave to God who made them and who 
shall judge them all. It is not a man who 
will gather them and judge them, but God their 
Rreaton, vc Me is 

Christ is to be the Judge. “It is he which was 
ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and 
dead” (Acts 10:42). ‘We must all appear be- 
fore the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10). 
“He hath appointed a day, in the which he will 
judge the world in righteousness by that man whom | 
he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assur- | 
ance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from | 
the dead” (Acts 17:31). ‘There is something in- — 
expressibly solemn and yet tender in the knowledge 
that Christ is to be our Judge; He who bore our 


188 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


nature and was the Son of man as well as the Son 
of God; He who hung bleeding and dying on the 
cursed tree, making satisfaction for sin, opening a 
way of reconciliation to God, will examine and 
sentence every human soul. His mercy is infinite 
and infinite is His justice. Condemned and re- 
jected by the world, Christ shall sit enthroned on 
the seat of universal judgment. 

The ground of the judgment is to be human 
conduct. We shall give an account of the deeds 
done iti the body. We are to be judged according 
to our works. Human conduct includes the atti- 
tude men have taken toward Jesus Christ.” The 
law of God is the standard for all judgment. Yet 
men have had different revelations of that law. 
The nations who lived before Christ came and 
who had no knowledge of the law given to Israel 
are not to escape judgment, for they are account- 
able. “These, having not the law, are a law unto 
themselves, which show the work of the law written 
in their hearts, their conscience also bearing wit- 
ness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or 
else excusing one another,-in-the day when God 
shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ ac- 
cording to my gospel” (Rom. 2: 14-16). Men 
who never heard of Christ will be judged by the~ 
light that God has. given. them .of.-His-require-~ 
ments. Jews will be judged by the law given to 


THE LAST JUDGMENT 139 


Moses. Christians by the attitude they have taken 
toward Jesus Christ. 

In Revelation 20: 12, St. John speaks of the 
books being opened. No one imagines that these 
are real books. What this symbol, which appears 
in Daniel also, tells us is that God has at hand 
an unerring transcript of the conduct of every 
soul. One of the favourite sayings of Jesus was 
this: “ There is nothing covered, that shall not-be 
‘revealed; neither hid that shall not be known. 
Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness 
shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have. 
spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed 
upon the housetops”” (Luke 12:2, 3). God is to 
judge the secrets of the heart. The judgment will 
create nothing. What it does is to reveal to God 
the Judge, to every man himself, to his fellow- 
creatures, each man’s soul. As mountains seen in 
the distance have soft and beautiful lines~and-re- 
veal nothing of their sharp angularities and rugged 
rocks, so our transgressions seen through the glass 
of our retrospection lose their harshness and ugli-' 
ness and take on a new appearance. Sin loses its 
hideousness when the memory of it is dim. We 
do not see and appreciate the terrible violation of 
God’s law that lies beneath every sin. But in the 
judgment, and before the Judge Himself, our _ 
memory of all our sins will be refreshed and we 


140 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


shall behold them—as~God Himself sees them. 
Whatever sentence is passed by the Judge will be 
approved fully by conscience. Indeed, the sentence 
will be that which each man, standing before God, 
will have passed upon himself. Christ will con- 
demn none who has not condemned himself. 

The most difficult problem of the Judgment is 
that of the relation of believers to it. The most 
definite teaching of the New Testament is that we 
are saved by our faith in Christ, and not by our 
works. Christ died for our sins and rose again for 
our justification. So preéminent is this idea in 
the Christian’s creed that for a man to claim sal- — 
vation on the ground of his own works is to deny 
that he is a Christian. But the question arises in 
our minds, If a Christian is saved by his faith in 
Jesus Christ, and if an unbeliever is condemned 
already, not because of his evil works, but because © 
of his unbelief, what is the meaning of their ap- 
pearing before the judgment seat and giving an — 
account of the deeds done in the body? Why go 
through the form of examining into their conduct? 

Every thoughtful Christian has, I am sure, felt 
the difficulty of accepting in the case of the Chris- 
tian, or of any man who heard the Gospel, both 
principles of judgment, works and faith. ‘The re- 
lationship of these two principles is one of those — 
mysteries which God has not yet revealed. But — 


THE LAST JUDGMENT 141 


this much is shown us: that the Christian is ac- 
cepted or condemned according to the attitude he 
has taken toward Jesus Christ. ‘Under the Gos- 
pel the special ground of condemnation is unbelief 
in Christ, and the ground of acceptance faith in 
Christ. St. Paul, looking forward to the judg- 
ment, based all his hopes upon what Christ had 
done for him and-his_faith in Christ, not on his 
long record of conscientious living. “I know 
whom I have. believed and.am_ persuaded.that he | 
is able to keep that which I have committed unto 
him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:12). There \ 
every Christian casts the anchor of his hope in 
Christ, not in self: 


“Nothing in my hand I bring, 
Simply to Thy Cross I cling.” 


The intimation of the New Testament is very 
clear as to the presence of Christians in the 
Judgment, as well as unbelievers and those who 
are judged by the law of conscience or the law of 
Moses. We shall all appear before the judgment 
seat of Christ. Since God has so appointed this 
judgment for Christians, it must serve some great 
end. It may be that the revelation of the judg- 
ment, showing the believer the enormity of his sin 
and his desperate need of a Redeemer, will add 
to the joy and rapture of the saints in heaven. 


142 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


The more a believer realizes that from which 
Christ has saved him, the deeper will be his joy in 
heaven with the redeemed, when they sing their 
hymns of thanksgiving to the Lamb which was 
slain. It is possible that in the judgment for 
Christians there may be pain and shame; but if so 
it will minister to their eternal felicity in heaven. 
It will give a richer note to their song when they 
sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to re- 
ceive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, 
and honour, and glory, and blessing ” (Rev. 5: 12). 
Of this, at least, we may be sure: The Judgment 
cannot hurt nor harm the believer. “His faith and 
love are in Christ, and love casteth out fear. The 
Lord knoweth them thatare His. 

In one of his letters, Luther tells of a dream in 
which Satan came to him and said, “ I have looked ; 
into the Book of Judgment and have seen the black F 
record of thy sins.” As he named over his of- 
fences, Luther was overwhelmed with despair. 
Then he bethought himself and answered, “I, too, | 
have gazed into the Book of Judgment and as | | 
thou sayest my sins are all recorded there: but I} 
saw one entry to my credit which thou hast over- © 
looked ; namely, ‘ The blood of Jesus Christ cleans- 
eth this man from all sin.’ That; and that alone, 
is the believer’s trust. 

What was the Book of Life which John saw 


THE LAST JUDGMENT 148 


opened in the day of judgment in addition to the 
other books? Does it mean the book of believers, 
the book to which Paul refers when he mentions 
his friends at Philippi and others ‘“‘ whose names 
are in the book of life” (Phil. 4:3)? Perhaps 
so. ‘That there is such a book, that is, that the 
names of believers are all known to God, and that 
all true believers, forgiven and saved by the blood 
of Christ shed for the remission of sin, shall be ~ 
openly acknowledged and acquitted in the Day of 
Judgment, is the reliance of the Christian man. 
In the Dream of Gerontius, Cardinal Newman 
follows the passage of a soul into the unseen and 
imagines its sentiments as it approaches the Judg- 
ment Seat. The soul says to its conducting angel: 


“ Dear Angel, say, . 
Why have I now no fear at meeting Him? 
Mtong my earthly life, the thought of death 
And judgment was to me most terrible. 
I had it aye before me, and I saw 
The Judge severe e’en in the Crucifix. 
Now that the hour is come, my fear 1s fled; 
And at this balance of my destiny 
Now close upon me, I can look forward 
With a serenest joy.” 


The angel then explains to the soul the reason 
for his joy and peace, and how it is that in the 
judgment it feels no dread and fears no doom. 


144 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


“Tt 1s because 

Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not 
fear 

Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so 
For thee the bitterness of death 1s passed. 
Also, because already in thy soul 
The judgment is begun. The day of doom, 
One and the same for the collected world, 
That solemn consummation for all flesh, 
Is, in the case of each, anticipate 
Upon his death; and, as the last great day 
In the particular judgment is rehearsed, 
So now, too, ere thou comest to the throne 
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray 
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot. 
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul 
Is firstfrwit to thee of thy recompense 
And heaven begun.” 


IX 
FUTURE RETRIBUTION 


“Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
Yet they grind exceeding small; 
Though with patience He stands waiting, 
With exactness grinds He all.” 


—LONGFELLOW, Translations from 
the German. 


“ Death 1s struck, and nature quaking; 
All creation is awaking, 
To its Judge an answer making. 


“Lo, the book, exactly worded, 
Wherein all hath been recorded: 
Thence shall judgment be awarded. 


“When the Judge His seat attaineth, 
And each hidden deed arraigneth, 
Nothing unavenged remaineth.” 


—THOMAS OF CELANO. 


IX 
FUTURE RETRIBUTION 


€ A HE doctrine of future punishment is not 

something upon which we stumble in the 

Bible, but which is out of keeping with 
all thought and experience. On the contrary, it is 
consistent with man’s convictions and experience. 
The great dramas and novels all have running 
through them the strain of punishment, not dis- 
ciplinary and reformatory punishment, but burning 
and consuming penal and vindicatory punishments, 
punishments to satisfy the law, to avenge the spirit 
of justice, and not to reform the evil-doer. Would 
it be possible to have a great book in which this 
note had not been struck? ‘Take George Eliot’s 
Romola. ‘The great tale reaches its climax when 
the wronged and betrayed and disowned old father 
and guardian, Baldasarre, wanders by the river, 
waiting, waiting, all the light of reason quenched 
by his wrongs and sufferings, save the one ele- 
mental instinct of justice and revenge. The body 
of Tito, escaping from the mob on the bridge, is 
cast up on the bank at the old man’s feet. Like 
a panther he leaps upon the half-conscious man, 
fiercely clutching his throat. Thus they die to- 


gether. Justice had brought Tito to the bar. The 
147 


148. PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


reader heaves a sigh of satisfaction, for he realizes 
that what something deep down in his heart de- 
manded as the proper sequel to the tale has come 
to pass. The chapter concludes with these words: 
“Who shall put his finger on the work of justice 
and say, ‘Itis there’? Justice is like the Kingdom 
of God—it is not without us as a fact; it is within 
us as a great yearning.” 

I cite the above incidents to show that while the 
doctrine of future punishment has on one side 
many difficulties, and there is much in our nature 
that rises in revolt against it, it has also a deep 
agreement with the noblest instincts of our moral 
nature. We are mistaken when we attempt to deal 
with the question of eternal retribution as if it 
were a matter which could be separated from the 
whole subject of evil and its punishment. What 
we are dealing with is the highest and final expres- 
sion of retribution for sin. In the opening verses 
of the sixth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, 
the author gives a brief summary of Christian 
truth. This is the order of his enumeration of the 
doctrines: repentance from dead works, faith to- 
ward God, baptism, ordination, the resurrection of 
the dead, “and of eternal judgment.” Eternal 
judgment is named as the final disclosure in God’s 
redemptive plan. Whether we like to or not, no 
honest-minded man can call himself a Christian, or 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 149 


deal in any intelligent way with the Christian 
revelation as we have it in the Holy Scriptures, 
without coming face to face with the definite teach- , 
ing that there comes a day when Almighty God 
will show the holiness of His being by an irrevo-. 
cable sentence of punishment upon sinful men. | 

Future retribution is taught by Jesus Christ. — 
The teaching of eternal life in Christ is a theme | 
developed by the-apostle of love, St. John, The 
great foundation fact of the Christian religion, 
Justification by Faith, is the burden of St. Paul’s 
teaching. But when it comes to the doctrine of 
hell, the one to whom we turn for information is _ 
Jesus Himself. What did Jesus teach? Both by — 
implication and by direct utterance He taught fu- 
ture punishment. Jesus had much to say about 
this present life and its duties; but always His 
thought is centered upon duty as it is related to 
destiny, to life hereafter. His words have a sol- 
emn echo to them, for He speaks as one who stands 
under the cope of life to come. 


Take His parables: Out of thirty-six parables, .// 
twelve of them leave men judged, condemned and | | 


sentenced for their sins. From that it is evident 
that Jesus has in mind something more than the 
misfortunes and punishments for sin which may 
fall upon men in this world. In the one terrific 
parable, where He gives us a brief but piercing 


150 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


apocalypse of the conditions of men hereafter, the 
wicked man is shown in unquestionable torment, 
a torment that cannot be alleviated and that can- 
not be terminated. 

The gulf between Lazarus and Dives is unbridge- 
able. Jesus.teaches that at the resurrection some 
shall come forth to the resurrection of life and 


some to the resurrection of judgment. What else — 


can He mean by a resurrection of judgment than 
that the judgment will be followed by punish- 
ment? He describes men who have turned too 
late to God, after a long period of indifference and 
neglect, as vainly knocking at the door where the 
feast is held and seeking admission. ‘The door is 
shut against them. He told of men who built a 
house on the sand. When the wind and the rains 
and floods beat against the house it fell, and great 
was the fall thereof. Surely He there teaches the 
possibility of a great and irrevocable tragedy over- 
taking a human soul. He represents God as say- 
ing, “Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity.” 
He said the world was like a vast harvest field, 
where the wheat and tares grow together until the 
judgment, where the tares, which He describes as 


the wicked, shall be separated from the good, and — 


cast into the furnace of fire. He warns certain 
classes of men that they are in danger of the fire 
of hell. He pleaded with men to make every kind 


itt, Fe 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 151 


of sacrifice, the eye, the right arm, the right foot, 
whatever was precious to them, rather than be cast 
into hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is 
not quenched. He told them not to fear the opin- 
ions and the persecutions of men, but to fear God 
only, who is able to destroy both body and soul 
in hell. 

All this He summed up in His last public teach- | 
ing: when sitting on the Mount of Olives, He 
drew His picture of the Last Judgment, when God 
says to one class of men, the company on His 
left hand, ‘‘ Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire 
prepared for the devil and his angels. And these — 
shall go away into eternal punishment.” 

At this point a question may be in your mind: 
If Jesus thus fully and repeatedly taught future 
retribution, upon what ground do so many persons 
calmly set aside the teaching? Upon three 
grounds: First, an effort is made to evacuate the 
teaching of serious import by reminding us that 
Jesus is speaking in parables and in metaphors. 
When He speaks of fire, of the undying worm, of 
gnashing of teeth, Jesus is employing metaphors, 
symbols. Yes, they are figures of speech but fig- 
ures that shake the soul! Whatever the punish- 
ment to which Jesus referred, it certainly is no 
light and dismissible thing if it has to be deseribed 

and illustrated in such fearful metaphors—fire un- 


152 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


quenched, the worm undying, the outer darkness, 
the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
We have in no degree lessened the solemn import 
of the words of Jesus by saying that they are 
figures of speech. 

Second, .an effort is made to empty the teachings 
of Jesus of their solemnity by attempting to prove 
that the word “ eternal,’ everlasting, is a mistrans- 
lation. It is claimed that the word “ aionos ” does 
not mean everlasting, but zonian, connected with, 
or lasting through an age. It is pointed out that 
in the Septuagint, or Greek translation of the Old 
Testament, from which most of the New Testa- 
ment citations are made, the same word, aionos, 
is applied to states and orders that we know were 
not everlasting, the gift of the land of Canaan, the 
kingdom of David, the priesthood of Aaron, the 
temple at Jerusalem. In the New Testament it is 
declared that the word meaning “ endless ” occurs 
just twice (1 Tim. 1:4; Hebrews 7: 16) and that 
in these places there is no reference whatever to 
future punishment. Dean Farrar, whose writings 
did so much to spread the impression that Chris- 
tianity was mistaken as to the doctrine of future 
punishment, in his Eternal Mercy lightly dis-— 
misses what he calls the “ battered and aged argu- 
ment” of St. Augustine, about the absurdity of 
making, in Christ’s picture of the judgment, eonian 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 153 


life for the righteous, mean endless life and bliss, 
but zonian punishment for the wicked a soon-to- 
be-terminated punishment. But this “aged and 
battered argument ”’ still holds water, because it is 
an argument not taken from etymology, but from 
common sense. The misery of the one and the 
bliss of the other must be coextensive. But the 
most effective way to deal with this effort to evacu- 
ate the teachings of Jesus of their solemn import 
is to show that even if the punishment to which 
Jesus refers is an age-long punishment, and not 
eternal punishment, still the teaching is unimpaired, 
and still it tells men of the “terror of the Lord” 
and ought to persuade them to repentance. Grant 
for the moment that this punishment upon the 1m- 
penitent is to last, not forever, but only through 
“ages of ages”: Have you plucked from such a 
woe its sting? The ons of Scripture, as referred 
to by St. Paul, are vast periods of time in which 
the Divine purpose works its sovereign will. What 
comfort or consolation do you bring to me as a 
mortal, finite man by telling me that I am to be 
punished through zeons, ages of the ages, but not 
forever? How can I discriminate between a pro- 
longed purgatory of, say, ten or a hundred thou- 
sand years, and endless punishment? ‘The great 
question is not any such breaking up of eternity 
into sections of time, but, Will God punish here- 


154 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


after? Does the Bible, Christ, Christianity, so 
teach? 

A third escape from the teaching of Jesus on 
this subject is sought in a frank denial of His in- 
fallibility. ‘This was the position taken by Theo- 
dore Parker. He acknowledged, as it seems to 
me every candid man must acknowledge, that 
Christ taught endless punishment, but makes this 
teaching a proof of His imperfection, that Jewish 
prejudices still lingered about Him. ‘This brings 
us squarely up with the issue: Christ an infallible 
teacher, AND the doctrine of future punishment; 
or, Christ a fallible teacher, a good but mistaken 
man, AND no future punishment. Before we dis- 
miss the doctrine of eternal punishment, we must 
first make up our mind that we are ready to dis- 
miss Jesus Christ. 

Eternal punishment is an inescapable inference 
from the plan of salvation. God is the author of 
eternal salvation. The angel said, “Thou shalt 
call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people 
from their sins.” Eternal life and happiness are 
granted to those who are saved by faith in Christ. 
He died for sinners. He gave His life a ransom 
for many. Men who believe and are saved have 
life eternal. The plain inference from all this is 
that if there is a heaven, there must be a hell; and 
if there is eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, 


. 
] 
if 





FUTURE RETRIBUTION 155 


there must be eternal death without Christ. In 
short, if men are saved, there must be some real 
fate from which they are saved. Repentance and 
faith in Christ and His sacrifice for sin are de- 
clared to be necessary unto salvation, but they are 
not necessary if men can do without faith and 
Christ. What is the meaning of eternal life and 
all its blessings, the Son of God dying on the Cross 
to secure it for us, and angels rejoicing in the sal- 
vation of one soul, unless there is a fate for men 
which is the very opposite of eternal life and its 
joys unspeakable? 

Thus, even if the Bible had not a single word in 
it about hell, about future punishment, the common 
‘sense inference from its teaching about eternal 
salvation would be that there is a contrasting and 
opposing state, eternal loss and death. Sin is al- 
ways represented in the Bible as the worst thing, 
and which will be visited with the worst punish- 
ments. On the one side, then, a great salvation, 
won through the agony and death and intercession 
of Jesus Christ, and, on the other, the curse and 
woe of sin. Thus, if there is no hell, no future 
and eternal punishment upon sin, then Christianity 
is a costly and tremendous remedy, but an unneces- 
sary one, for man did not require it, and will be 
saved without it. Every Christian sermon and 
prayer implies, logically, future punishment. If 


156 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


not, then let us be honest, and abandon these names 
of our faith, Saviour, Redeemer, Forgiveness, 
Propitiation, Justification, Eternal Life. The 
whole Christian revelation is reduced to a mean- 
ingless absurdity if its great assumption, the lost 
and sinful estate of man, his sorrow and misery 
here, and his misery and woe hereafter, is aban- 
doned. 

Let us now consider some of the proposed ways 
of disposing of the wicked other than that of the. 
plan of Christianity by eternal punishment. One 
way is by annihilation. Advocates of this plan 
say that immortality is not natural to mankind, 
but the gift of Christ to redeemed men. Because 
of the incarnation and the resurrection of Christ, 
all men will be raised up in the general resurrec- 
tion. But only the righteous and the believing 
shall live forever. The wicked shall be judged, 
condemned, and destroyed, literally put out of ex- 
istence. In this way men seek to preserve their 
respect for the justice of God and their conviction 
as to the guilt of sin, and, at the same time, re- 
lieve themselves of the burden of contemplating 
man forever punished. We wonder if a soul could 
be destroyed. Would God Himself destroy a soul, 
any more than He could or would force the will of 
man? ‘To me the destruction, annihilation, of a 
soul is unthinkable. 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 157 


But, granted that it were possible, would this sort 
of punishment be any relief, be any less solemn 
than the other? As living creatures in this world, 
there is nothing from which we so much shrink as 
physical death, for it is the annihilation of our 
body. Would not the soul shrink from annihila- 
tion as the most awful of fates? Can we even 
imagine or picture to ourselves what such a thing 
would ber Until we can do this, and certainly 
no finite man can, we dare not say that such a way 
of disposing of the wicked is preferable to that of 
eternal punishment. So far as the Scriptures go, 
all the references to the punishments of the im- 
penitent are of such a nature as cannot be applied 
to a state of annihilation. The figures employed 
by Jesus—fire, worm, darkness, and wailing and 
gnashing of teeth—have no meaning if punish- 
ment is annihilation. The parallel of Matthew 
25: 46, everlasting life and everlasting punishment, 
cannot hold at all, if the fate of the wicked is 
cessation of being. 

Another suggested solution is by restoration. 
The belief in the restoration of all souls to har-— 
mony with God includes a belief in what is called 
a Second Probation. Men who have rejected the 
Gospel and died impenitent in this life will have 
another chance hereafter. The Scriptural ground 
for such a hope is certainly very slender. It con- 


158 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


sists in the obscure passages in 1 Peter 3: 19 and 
4:6; “ Being put to death in the flesh, but made — 
alive in the spirit; in which also he went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison, that aforetime 
were disobedient, when the long suffering of God 
waited in the days of Noah”’; also, ‘‘ For unto this 
end was the Gospel preached even to the dead.” 
The interpretation of the passage hinges upon the 
word “spirit.” If it means that Christ in His 
spirit, as distinct from His bodily presence, after 
His crucifixion, went and preached to the ante- 
diluvians, who had disobeyed the preaching of — 
Noah, then it does seem to hold out a second hope, 
at least, for these antediluvians. But may it mean 
that Christ, put to death in the flesh, was made 
alive in the Spirit, the Spirit of grace and power, 
the Holy Spirit, by which, long before His in- 
carnation, He had preached to the men of Noah’s 
time, who rejected the preaching? If so, there is 
no intimation of a second probation in the passage. 
Certainly it is a slender ground on which to build 
a hope that is contrary to the whole drift of the 
Gospel message, with its yearning earnestness and 
its constant insistence upon the choices and acts 
of this present life. 

The saying of Jesus about the sin against the 
Holy Ghost, not to be forgiven in this world nor 
in the world to come; His comment upon Judas, 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 159 


“Good were it for him that he had not been born,” 
and the solemn note of finality in Christ’s descrip- 
tion of the last Judgment are, to say the least, very 
difficult to fit into a plan of post-mortem evangeli- 
zation. Christ says, “And the door was shut.” 
There is no hint that it will be opened again.. 

The Scriptures describe the mediatorial kingdom 
of Christ as coming to an end. When it does 
come to an end, all hope and possibility of repent- 
ance must cease. Those who faintly trust the 
“larger hope” say that that mediatorial kingdom 
of Christ will not come to an end until every lost 
soul has been brought home. Every real Chris- 
tian would like to see such a consummation. But 
there is a difference between the desire for a thing 
and the belief that it will come to pass. God 
WOULD have ALL men to be saved. But in the reve- 
lation He has given us, does He teach that all men 
will be saved? ‘The passages of Scripture usually 
cited by the advocates of universal restoration of 
all souls to God are the following: Acts 3: 21: 
“Whom the heavens must receive until the times 
of the restitution of all things”; Romans 5: 18: 
“So then as through one trespass the judgment 
came upon all men to condemnation, even so 
through one act of righteousness the free gift came 
upon all men to justification of life”; Romans 
8: 20: “ The creation was subjected to vanity, not 


160 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected 
it, in hope that the creation also itself shall be de- 
livered from the bondage of corruption”; Colos- 
sians 1: 20: “ Through him to reconcile all things 
unto himself—whether things upon the earth or 
things in the heavens”; Philippians 2: 10: “ That 
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of 
things in heaven and things in earth, and things 
under the earth, and every tongue confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord”; 1 Timothy 2:4: “ Who 
would have all men to be saved and come to the 
knowledge of the truth.” 

A grand note of universal restitution seems to 
echo in these passages. But when we compare 
Scripture with Scripture, when we look with awe 
upon the dying agony of Christ, when we take into 
consideration the awful power of the human heart 
to reject the love of God, we sadly, but decisively, 
conclude that the restitution of all things does not 
include universal salvation. If every knee is to 
bow and every tongue confess, it must mean the 
honour paid to Christ by all the redeemed; if God 
would have all men to be saved and come to the 
knowledge of the truth, we must understand “ not 
the will of efficient purpose, but of benevolent de- 
sire, as shown in provision, plan and arrange- 
ments.’ I know that there are many devout souls 
who, in spite of the plain drift of the Scriptural 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 161 


teachings and the implications of the whole plan 
of salvation, indulge a faint hope that in some 
way all souls will be saved. ‘The darkness into 
which they pass at death, or at the general resur- 
rection and judgment, is not a final and unrelieved 
darkness of unending separation from God, but a 
limited and penitential night, which shall issue in 
the morning of restoration and salvation a dark- 
ness like that of Peter when he went out into the 
night and wept bitterly, but returned at length to 
Christ, to love and serve Him forevermore. 
Impenitent sinners shall, indeed, weep and wail, 
but it will be the beginning of a process of 
purification and reclamation, and not of final 
doom. In our human ignorance of the whole 
mind of God, each one of us could wish that such 
a hope were well founded. For myself, I do not 
believe it to be consistent with the revelation God 
has granted unto us. It is often said that the 
keener judgments of life to come, the searching 
touch of a pain that is both penal and disciplinary, 
will produce a penitence which earthly experiences 
and opportunities could not produce. Thus, by a 
prolonged purgatory, all souls will repent and be 
saved. But would a penitence educed in that way 
be a real penitence? Would it have any moral 
worth? Would man’s will have any part in such a 
penitence? In the words of Thomas Selby, 


162 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


“Devils and angels would join in shouts of de- 
rision at a penitence with no will in it.” 

But some men will say, even if the Bible does 
teach it, and even if it is an inescapable inference 
from a plan of salvation, still such a fate for the 
. wicked is inconsistent. with the character of God, — 
His justice and His love. Let us see. Is it in 
_ consistent with God’s justice? The judge of all 
: the earth must do right. All agree to this. Can 
_ God thus punish the impenitent and do right? The 
_ whole objection is based on the idea that eternal 
punishment is a penalty disproportionate to the of- 
- fense, the sin of man. What does sin deserve? 
What penalty, what degree of punishment, would 
you suggest as proportionate to it? The only 
measure that we have of sin, aside from some of 
the effects that we see in time, is, first, the penalty 
decreed against it, eternal death, and second, the 
costly remedy that was devised by God to pay the 
price of sin and rescue man from its curse and 
condemnation. We all know what that price was. 
It is only when we stand apart in Gethsemane and 
behold the Son of God in His agony, sweating, as 
it were, great drops of blood, and when we see 
Him in the darkness of Calvary crying out in the 
final hour, “My God, why hast thou forsaken 
me!” that we begin to get an adequate idea of 
what sin is and what sin deserves. If the penalty 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 163 


upon sin was too great, then the remedy for it was 
too costly. If you pull down one stone of Chris- 
tian truth, the whole structure must collapse. Had 
there been no Gethsemane and no Calvary, I could 
not accept the doctrine of eternal punishment. But 
when I behold the Son of God on Calvary for my 
sins, I am ready to own that though clouds and 
darkness are round about Him, righteousness and 
judgment are the habitation of His throne. 

The revelation of the fact of eternal retribution, 
like everything else in God’s plan, is not without 
benefit to mankind, though it puts a stop to mercy 
to the individual. Men are warned and persuaded 
by the declaration that God will punish. This has 
been finely put by Selby in his sermon, “ Untem- 
pered Judgments”: “ Hell is as vicarious as the 
Cross on which the shadow of hell once fell. Upon 
the Cross the guiltless willingly suffered for the 
guilty. In the realms of the lost, unwilling spirits 
suffer a righteous penalty, that the untold worlds 
of God’s empires may be admonished and preserved 
from falling. The very fires of wrath are sac- 
rificial, although those consumed by them may not 
be purified. The angels who pour out the vials 
come forth from the temple clothed in the vest- 
ments of the altar. There is a priesthood of vi- 
carious judgment as well as of mercy.” 

Is future punishment consistent with God’s love? 


164 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY, 


The best answer to this is the one great revelation 
that God has given of His love. The one supreme 
manifestation of God’s love has respect to the 
production of holiness. Herein is love, that God 
sent His Son to die for us, to be the propitiation 
for our sins. The Divine benevolence cannot be 
impeached if men finally reject the grand and costly 
provision of God’s love. When a man says that 
God is love, he cannot ignore the careful definition 
and explanation of God’s love that God Himself 
has given us in the death of Christ for our sins. 
That act as an exhibition of Divine love is abso- 
lutely meaningless if men are not under the penalty 
and curse of sin. 


The nature of future punishment is of minor 
importance compared with the solemn proclama- 
tion of punishment. From intimations here and 
there in the teaching of Jesus, and from what we 
know of our own hearts, it is possible that some- 
thing akin to remorse will be an element in penal 
pain. The weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
teeth sounds like a description of hopeless remorse. 
Great sinners have testified that when they were 
first convinced of their sins their chief pain was in 
the feeling that they had rejected Christ and tram- 
pled His dying love under their feet. ‘They shall 
look upon Him Whom they have pierced. When 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 165 


the rich man in hell was inclined to protest against 
his fate, Abraham said to him, ‘‘ Son, remember! ” 
. For some men memory will be hell. 


W hat is this power 

That recollects the distant past 
And makes this hour, 

Unlike the last, 

Pregnant with life? 

Calling across the deep 

To things that slumber, men that sleep. 
They rise by number, 

And with stealthy creep, 

Like a battalion’s tread, 
Marshall our dead. 


This is the gtft 

Men cannot bargain with nor shift; 
Which went with Dives 

Down to hell, 

With Lazarus up to heaven; 
Which will not let us eer forget 
The sins of years 

Though washed wiih tears. 
Whate’er it be, 

Men call 1t Memory. 


Because of the indubitable fact of terrible re- 
morse, even in this life men have tried to comfort 
themselves with the thought that this is all that 1s 
meant by hell. In the dark sunset of his reign, 
when from his island retreat at Capri Tiberius 
was issuing his orders for slaughter and torture 


166 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


at Rome, he commenced a letter to a friend thus: 
“How shall I write to you at this time? What 
shall I write, or what shall I not write? May the 


gods and the goddesses destroy me worse than | 


daily feel myself perishing if I know!” Already 
Tiberius was in a hell that he had made for him- 
self. There is no doubt that men frequently by 
their misdeeds put themselves in such a hell in this 
present life. But that hell, described by the Per- 
sian poet as the “ shadow of a soul on fire,” is not 
to be confused with the future punishment upon 
sin. All the pains of remorse that men endure in 
this world, while, in a sense, penal, are not alto- 
gether penal; they are also disciplinary; they can, 
they frequently do, teach the soul penitence. But 
the pains of hell are penal, purely so; they are the 
final and irrevocable judgments upon sin. 

Men talk about the development of religious 
thought and the new ideas of the truth. But let it 
be clearly and courageously stated, that no new 
way of interpreting the Bible has taken out of it 
the solemn and searching fact of future retribution. 
The Bible teaches it, Christ affirmed it, the whole 
plan of salvation presupposes it, conscience echoes 
it. Nothing has happened in the intervening cen- 
turies to render meaningless or out of place the 
words of St. Paul to men at Corinth: “ For we 
must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ; 


Trine atime 


FUTURE RETRIBUTION 167 


that every man may receive the things done in the 
body, according to that he hath done, whether it 
be good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror 
of the Lord, we persuade men.” 

The deep note of judgment to come reverberates 
in the moral nature of man and divine revelation 
alike. In his sermon on Future Punishment, 
Henry Ward Beecher, who, like every other min- 
ister, says he could wish that some one else would 
preach the sermon on this solemn theme, neverthe- 
less concludes with this searching appeal: “ Men 
and brethren, we are standing on the verge of the 
unseen world. All the thunderous din of this life 
ought not to fill our ears so but that we can hear 
the Spirit and the Bride that say to every man, 
through this golden air to-day, ‘Come! come!’ 
And that lonely and solemn sound, like that of the 
surf beating on the shore from the broad Atlantic, 
that all day and all night sounds on, and is never 
still—that sound comes from the other world, and 
_ says to us, ‘ Beware, beware of that punishment of 
sin which overhangs the other and the under life 
forever and forever!’ May God bring us through 
brightness to gladness, and through gladness to 
joy, and through joy to immortality of blessedness. 
Amen.” 





its on 
; eaty 
Wael am . 








xX 
AT LAST 


How bright these glorious spirits shine! 
Whence all their bright array? 

How came they to the blissful seats 
Of everlasting day? 


Lo! These are they from sufferings great, 
Who came to realms of light, 

And in the blood of Christ have washed 
Those robes which shine so bright. 


Now, with triumphal palms, they stand 
Before the throne on high, 

And serve the God they love, amidst 
The glories of the sky. 


His presence fills each heart with joy, 
Tunes every mouth to sing: 

By day, by night, the sacred courts 
With glad hosannas ring. 


Hunger and thirst are felt no more, 
Nor suns with scorching ray; 

God is their sun, whose cheering beams 
Diffuse eternal day. 


The Lamb which dwells amidst the throne 
Shall o’er them still preside; 

Feed them with nourishment divine 
And all their footsteps guide. 


"Mong pastures green He'll lead His flock, 
Where living streams appear; 

And God the Lord from every eye 
Shall wipe off every tear. 


—PARAPHRASE LX VI. 


x 
AT LAST 


CROSS the river from my boyhood home 
A was a range of high hills, crowned with 
a forest. Often I used to watch the great 

disc of the moon come slowly up from behind the 
hill, and, .sometimes, I saw the sun rise out of 
that same mysterious country. I was happy in 
that hillside home. I had kind parents and ample 
space in which to play and hunt with my three 
brothers. Yet the fact that I was happy where I 
was did not keep me from wondering what lay be- 
yond that high hill and wishing that one day I 
might stand on its summit and see what was on 
the other side. So is it with the high barrier which 
separates this life from the life to come. However 
happy or useful our life here, there are times when 
we have a wistful desire to know what lies beyond 
the horizon, to see on the other side of the hill. 
The oft reiterated demand that we must get rid 
of our “ otherworldliness” and confine the re- 
ligious interests to this present life and this visible 
world is a demand which is contrary to our highest 
instinct. Religion can never be limited to the field 


of this world. It will express its highest hopes 
171 


172. PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


and its noblest music when it comes to speak of 
the life beyond the rampart of the grave. 

“As it is in heaven,” our Lord taught us to say — 
in the Lord’s Prayer. Perhaps when we think 
quietly about the life beyond we are apt to over- 
look what must be its chief glory, that is, its moral 
perfection. ‘“ Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven.’ In heaven God’s will is perfectly done. © 
In a world where God’s will is constantly ignored 
and defied, it is difficult for us to envisage a world 
where God’s will is perfectly done. The angels 
are spoken of as they who do the will of God, and 
Christ, speaking in the Psalms, says, ‘‘ Lo, I come 
to do thy will, O God.” The moral glory of the 
life of Jesus is our best illustration of what the 
moral order of heaven will be. 

Jesus tells us by that clause in the Lord’s Prayer, 
“as it is in heaven,” that the true and divine pat- 
tern is the life in heaven. This same idea was 
carried out by St. Paul who says that our citizen- 
ship, our politics, our true order and plan of life 
is to be found in heaven, and not upon the earth. 
We see here on earth some noble exhibitions of 
the possibilities of human life, so exalted that we 
can hardly conceive of heaven itself producing any- 
thing finer. Perhaps it will not. But here we 
see these exhibitions of noble living and complete 
submission to the will of God against the dark 


AT LAST 173 


background of this world’s woe and sin. But 
what will it be when we can live in a world that 
knows nothing else than the creature’s devotion to 
the Creator! What a world this would be to-day 
if man had never fallen! But the one man who 
came into this world and did perfectly the will of 
God in the beauty of His life opens for us a window 
into heaven. 

Glorious as was the life of Jesus when on earth, 
it was nevertheless a life of sorrow and pain and 
death. That was because the world into which 
He had come was so unlike Him, its life so hostile 
to His life. Hence the sorrow and the travail of 
Christ’s earthly life. But in heaven there will be 
no contrast between the life which does perfectly 
the will of God and the world in which that life 
is lived. We often hear read from the Scriptures, 
or repeated in the prayer, or sung in the hymn 
or anthem, those words of St. John’s Revelation, 
how there shall in heaven be no more death, no 
more crying, no more pain, no more curse. What 
those assurances tell us, though in a negative way, 
is that heaven is to be a world of moral beauty 
and glory. No shadow of the world’s disorder 
and sin will fall upon the kingdom of the re- 
deemed. 

In the introduction to a celebrated sermon on 
immortality Canon Liddon tells of an officer of the 


174 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


British army in India who, after long and arduous 
service in India, had returned to end his days in 
England. A company of his friends one day per- — 
suaded him to tell some of his experiences in the © 
army. After relating a number of amazing ad- 
ventures, hairbreadth escapes and personal encoun- — 
ters during the Sepoy Mutiny, the officer said, “I 
expect to see something much more remarkable — 
than anything I have been describing.” As he — 
was seventy years of age, and had retired from 
active service, his hearers were somewhat per- — 
plexed at his words. But after a moment’s si- 
lence he added, “ I mean the first five minutes after 
death.” : 

The first five minutes after death! What will 
it be like? And the first five millennia after death, 
for now time has lost its meaning, what will it be 
like? The Psalmist asked in a rather troubled and 
depressed accent, “ Wilt thou show wonders to the 
dead?” Certainly in Christian faith the answer 
is a triumphant “‘ Yes!” 

We have already commented on the fact that the 
alleged communications from those who have 
passed within the veil cast hardly a ray of light 
upon the nature of the heavenly existence. But 
if those who have entered the unseen world have 
not come back to describe it for us, is it possible 
that men should have a brief and fleeting vision 


AT LAST 175 


of the life to come? St. Paul, as we have seen, 
speaks at length and with noble eloquence about 
life after death and the resurrection from the dead. 
In this connection it must be remembered that Paul 
says he was once caught up into Paradise, into 
the third heaven, whether in the body or out of it, 
he knew not, and heard things such as it is not 
lawful for man to utter. Many have taken this 
to mean that Paul’s unhesitating doctrine about the 
resurrection and the life to come is based upon a 
special revelation which he had when he was trans- 
ported into heaven before his death. 

But what of others? The great Christian 
apostle may have been granted a fleeting experi- 
ence of the life to come, but has such a thing been 
granted to any one else? One of the most extra- 
ordinary and best authenticated claims to such an 
entrance into life to come is the celebrated trance 
of the Rev. William Tennent, who for forty years 
was pastor of the historic Presbyterian Church, at 
Freehold, N. J., on the battlefield of Monmouth. 

As a young man, Tennent was preparing for his 
examinations before the Presbytery of New Bruns- 
wick, and intense application had affected his 
health. He was conversing with his brother one 
morning when he suddenly fainted away, and, ap- 
parently, expired. After every usual test of death 
had been applied, his body was prepared for burial, 


176 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 
and the day was set for the funeral. On the ap- 


pointed day the people had assembled for the fu- © 


aici 
ee ee eS eS 


neral, when the body suddenly opened its eyes and ~ 
gave a dreadful groan. After vigorous restora- — 
tives had been applied, his resuscitation was ef- — 


fected. For many weeks he was in an extremely 
weakened condition, but slowly began to mend. 


He had no recollection for some time of any ~ 


event previous to his resuscitation, and had to be 
taught his letters again like a little child. But one 
day his memory came back to him and his knowl- 
edge of the past was that of any normal mind. 
Although very reluctant to speak of his experi- 
ence, he related on several occasions what had 
transpired. In an instant he found himself in an- 
other state of existence and under the conduct of 
a heavenly being who bade him follow. Thus con- 
ducted, he beheld an ineffable glory and an innu- 
merable company of happy beings in the midst of 
this glory. He, too, thrilled to their great joy and 
besought his heavenly conductor to permit him to 
join them. But his guide told him that he must 
return to earth, He heard and obeyed the sen- 
tence with the sorrow of despair. ‘‘ Lord, must 


I go back?” was his earnest expostulation. ‘The 


shock of his disappointment made him faint, and 
he saw his brother and the physician standing over 
his supposedly inanimate body. 


AT LAST 177 


What are we to think of such a claim as this? 
For myself I think it quite credible and a very 
important bit of evidence as to the joys and glories 
of those who die in the Lord. It makes one think 
of the fine old hymn of Isaac Watts: 


“O could we make our doubts remove, 

Those gloomy doubts that rise, 

And see the Canaan that we love 
With unbeclouded eyes; 

Could we but climb where Moses stood, 
And view the landscape o’er, 

Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood, 
Should fright us from the shore.” 


Could we see what ‘l'ennent saw, death would be 
looked upon in a far different way. But for the 
great number of men no such vision has been 
vouchsafed. Evidently, it is not the plan of God 
for usin this world. Weare to walk by faith, and 
not by sight.. But when we hear the testimony of 
such a man as Tennent we could wish to share 
for a moment the rapture of such a vision. 

Most of us, I suppose, make our approach to 
the life to come, not in thinking of it in connec- 
tion with our own eventual experience of it, but 
through our thought for those who are already in 
that world. Bayard Taylor tells how the British 
soldiers, just before they were to make the charge 
at Sebastopol during the Crimean War, were sing- 


178 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


ing “Annie Laurie.” They were thinking of dif- 
ferent persons as they sang, but the song was the 
same: 


“ Fach heart recalled a different name, 
But all sang, Annie Laurie.” 


When we think of the life to come, we all think of 
different persons; some of a father, and some of a 
mother, some of a husband or wife, and some of a 
brother, or a little child. But we all have the same > 
reverent curiosity and the same affectionate long- 
ing after reunion. Sorrow’s hand may at times 
rest heavily upon us, but it is sorrow’s hand, never- 
theless, which opens for us the gate into the other 
country. 

After the wreck of his fortune and reputation, 
Aaron Burr still retained his most cherished joy 
and possession, his beautiful and accomplished 
daughter, Theodosia. In 1813, this daughter, who 
was the wife of Governor Alston of South Caro- 
lina, embarked at Charleston on a pilot ship sailing 
for New York. ‘The ship never came to port, nor 
was it ever heard of again. Had we been in the 
vicinity of the Battery on almost any day in the 
years which followed the disappearance of the 
vessel, we might have seen an old and broken man, — 
but bearing still the unmistakable mark of distinc- 
tion of mind, walk slowly down upon the Battery 


AT LAST 179 


and stand for a long time gazing wistfully down 
the harbour at the incoming vessels, as if still 
“ cherishing the faint, fond hope that his Theodosia 
was coming to him from the other side of the 
world.” 

As the fond heart of that father daily won- 
dered about the fate of his lost daughter, so we 
try to follow our friends into the unseen and we 
wonder how they fare. 

When Jesus said that in heaven they are as the 
angels and neither marry nor are given in mar- 
riage, did He mean to say that husbands and wives 
in the heavenly life will not be conscious of the 
relationship which existed between them in this 
life? I do not so interpret. 1 remember once at 
the close of a service in the church speaking with 
the widow of a clergyman of the Episcopal Church 
on this very subject. She said, “ Shall I be the 
wife of my deceased husband in heaven?” Their 
union had been a perfect and blessed one, and un- 
less it was to be resumed in the life to come, that 
life had no interest for her. Much as she loved 
her husband, this woman erred in making the whole 
future life hinge upon her reunion with him. I 
believe that we shall see and know our friends 
again, but to the believer and the Christian dis- 
ciple heaven’s greatest joy and glory will be life 
with Christ. We shall be with the Lord. No 


180 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


matter how our mourning hearts yearn for reunion © 
with the departed, the great power and joy of — 
heaven will be fellowship with Christ. But there 
is no reason why this supreme joy of fellowship 
with Christ, “with the Lord,’ as Paul put it, 
should not be accompanied by the joy of reunion 
with our friénds. 

The Bible, it is true, has little to say about re- 
union with friends in the life to come, and rather 
assumes such a thing than argues for it. Yet, here 
and there in the Bible, we find intimations of such 
reunion. When his infant son died, David com- 
forted himself by saying, “ He cannot return to 
me, but I shall go to him.” Christ said to the 
thief on the cross, “ To-day shalt thou be with me 
in Paradise.” ‘That would imply recognition and 
consciousness. ‘The same is true of His saying to 
the disciples on the last night, “I go to prepare a 
place for you, that where I am, there ye may be 
also.” The disciples are one day to be with Christ 
and know that they are with Him. So St. Paul 
comforts the Christians of Thessalonica who are 
mourning over their dead with the assurance that 
they shall be raised up at the coming of Christ. 
He does not directly affirm that they shall see and 
know one another, but he does say, “ Comfort one 
another with these words,” and this must mean 
the comfort of reunion. 


AT LAST 181 


In the winter of ’62, Lincoln’s son William, a 
lad of twelve, sickened and died. It was the great 
sorrow of a sad life. For a number of weeks 
Lincoln observed the Thursday on which the child 
died as a day of seclusion and mourning, and was 
with difficulty persuaded to give up the dangerous 
practice. Some months afterward, he was at 
Fortress Monroe. In a moment of leisure he was 
reading his favourite author. Calling his aide into 
the room, he read to him passages from Hamlet, 
Macbeth, and then the passage from the third act 
of King John, where Constance, whose boy has 
been imprisoned by his uncle, King John, expresses 
to her confessor the fear that she may not know 
her boy in heaven. When he had finished read- 
ing the lines, Lincoln turned to his aide and said, 
“Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend 
and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not a 
reality? Just so | dream of my boy Willie.” And 
with that he bowed his head on the table and sobbed 
aloud. : 

Into how many a mother’s grief do these words 
of Constance fit themselves? 


“ And Father Cardinal, I have heard you say 
That we shall see and know our friends in Heaven; 
If that be true, I shall see my boy again; 
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, 
To him that did but yesterday suspire, 


182 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


There was not such a gracious creature born, 
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud 

And chase the native beauty from his cheek, 
And he will look as meagre as an ague’s fit; 
And so he'll die; and rising so again, 

When I shall meet him in the Court of Heaven 
L shall not know him: and therefore, never, never 
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.” 


We wonder what changes time will have wrought 
in our friends who have passed into the unseen. 
Will a mother who lost her babe meet it as a child 
in heaven? Or would recognition be impossible? 
These questions may puzzle us here, but the heav- 
enly life will solve and answer them all. During 
a trip to California last summer, I met a number 
of old school friends whom I had not seen for 
twenty-five years. At first there was something 
odd and strange about our meeting; the mind 
seemed to be exerting itself to frame out of this 
changed personality a picture of the friend of long 
ago. But after I had talked with them for a few 
minutes, all consciousness of the outward change 
wrought by the hand of time vanished, and we 
were our old selves again, schoolmates as we once 
had been, and totally oblivious of the tracery of 
the years. That means there is something in per- 
sonality, in the soul, the inner self, which changes 
not. So I take comfort about meeting long-lost 
friends in heaven. 


AT LAST 183 


Jonathan Swift, when he heard that Stella, to 
whom he had written so many love letters in a 
mysterious cipher, was dying, exclaimed: “T think 
that there is not a greater folly than that of enter- 
ing into too strict a partnership or friendship with 
the loss of which a man must be absolutely miser- 
able, but especially when the loss occurs at an age 
at which it is too late to engage in a new friend- 
ship.” Such loss does leave a man absolutely mis- 
erable unless he has the hope of reunion with full 
recognition after death. That hope we have in 
Christ, for, as St. Paul said, “If we believe that 
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which 
sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” 

The trouble is that the blow and shock of be- 
reavement sometimes brings on a state of spiritual 
stupor in which faith is eclipsed. One of the most 
distressing cases I have come in contact with in my 
ministry was that of a man, advanced in years, 
who lost a lovely wife, the companion of nearly 
half acentury. The man was an intelligent Chris- 
tian and, in an altogether exceptional and Christ- 
like way, had given himself to the ministry of 
the unfortunate among mankind. One would have 
expected that this man of all men would have 
quickly recovered from the first shock and parox- 
ysm of his grief. But he has never lifted his 
head; all the heart and hope are gone out of him, 


184 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


and almost like a ghost I meet him from time to 
time. He has not been stripped of his Christian 
faith, but he has so brooded over his loss that he 
has not found the strength and hope in his Chris- 
tian life that he might have found. Hence it is 
that we must give trial-flights, as it were, to our 
faith, and prepare ourselves for the certain visita- 
tion of sorrow. 

When we feel sure that our loved ones live again 
and that one day we shall meet again, our next 
thought is as to their occupations. They are still 
rational beings, though now lifted above the limita- 
tions of time and space. Faithful and able as was 
their service on earth, they are ready now for 
greater tasks. What will these be? 

Man was created for activity. We put “At 
Rest’ upon the graves of our dead. But that is 
with reference to the cares and trials of this life. 
In the life beyond there must be activities in keep- 
ing with the new powers of the redeemed body and 
soul. What these are to be we can only conjec- 
ture. Matthew Arnold sang of his noble father, 
the headmaster of Rugby: 

“ Somewhere surely afar 
In the sounding labour-house vast 
Of being, is practised that strength, 
Zealous, beneficent, firm. 


Still thou performest the Word of the Spirit 


In whom thou dost live.’ 


AT LAST 185 


Every man who has had a good Christian parent 
likes to think of him as engaged in some high work 
for God. God’s empire is vast. It may be that in 
other worlds there are rational beings who need 
the ministry of heaven’s spirits, and that on some 
such errands the redeemed are sent of God. It 
is written of heaven that the Lamb is the light 
thereof. If Christ is to be heaven’s light and law, 
and if sacrificial love is the constitution and the 
glory of that world, then the redeemed man’s love 
and his exhaustless energies must find some outlet 
in high undertaking for others. In the words of 
Jeremy Taylor: “There labour shall be without 
fatigue; ceaseless activity without the necessity of 
repose; high enterprise without disappointment, 
and mighty achievements which leave no weariness 
or decay.” 

In one of the fine old hymns we sing, “ What 
social joys are there!’’ One of the chiefest joys 
of this world is its social joy, the intercourse we 
have with kindred minds. If this is a joy of ra- 
tional creatures in this life, still more will it be 
the joy of the life to come. Izaak Walton, when 
he heard the sweet singing of the birds in the 
meadows which border the Itchen, used to say, 
“Lord, if Thou hast provided such music for sin- 
ners upon earth, what hast Thou in store for Thy 
saints in heaven!” If a Socrates could look for- 


LOE 


186 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


ward with a thrill of expectation to conversing 
with Homer and the mighty dead of the ancient 
world, how much more the Christian with the 
great men of the Old Testament and the New 
Testament. 

I have sometimes been asked, “ Whom, above 
all others, would you like to see in heaven?” Of 
course, we put Christ above all the rest, and after 
Christ our own beloved friends. After one has 
seen face to face the Saviour who died for him, 
and then has greeted his family, which one of the 
noble dead will one first wish to see? For myself, 
the answer will be, St. Paul. After Christ, he 
was the most influential man who has lived on this 
earth. Whether one takes him in his intellect, or 
in his affections, or in his achievements, he stands 
without a peer. I have often wondered what Paul 
looked like. Then I shall see him face to face. 
Then, in the Old Testament, there is David, the 
sweet singer of Israel. Think of looking into the 
face of him whose music has charmed the ear of so 
many generations of men, the man who wrote the 
Twenty-third Psalm! And after David, grand old 
Elijah. What meetings with the great and illus- 
trious of all time! What unfolding of the secrets 
which time could not teach us! What deep under- 
standing of the events of our trial on earth! 
“ What knitting severed friendships up ”! 


AT LAST 187 


One of the greatest calamities which could be- 
fall the human race would be a serious decline in 
faith in the life after death. Such a decline would 
destroy one of the great motives for moral ieee 
The editor of one of the leading financial journals 
thinks that even now one of the reasons for the 
present moral subsidence in human society is a 
change in thought about the life hereafter. He 
says, “ The question of immediate and tremendous 
importance to Wall Street, quite as much as to any 
other part of the world, is ‘ Has there been a de- 
cline of faith in the future life?’ and if so, to 
what extent is this responsible for the speculative 
phenomena of our times, the eager pursuit of 
wealth, the shameless luxury and display, the gross 
and corrupting extravagance, the misuse of sudden 
fortune, the indifference to law, the growth of 
graft, the abuse of corporate power, and the social 
unrest?” } 

The sinking of faith in the life to come not only 
endangers the social body, but it robs the individual | 
of joy and hope. If, at the end, a man and his 
dog fare alike, it is inevitable that such a creed 
should result in moral relaxation and the dimming 
of hope. Gibbon, in his celebrated Fifteenth Chap- ~ 
ter, gives as one of the five causes for the rapid 
spread of Christianity its doctrine of reward and 
punishment hereafter. No matter what the ideas 


188 PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 


held before by the pagan and Jewish worlds, Christ 
brought immortality to light in the Gospel and 
made the hereafter a reality to believing men and 
women. A world made up of men and women 
whose conduct is in no way regulated by any seri- 
ous conviction of rewards and punishments here- 
after is a world that none would care to contem- 
plate. 

It is, therefore, the duty of every Christian man 
to express to the world his faith in the life ever- 
lasting. Just as we testify to patriotism and in- 
dustry and compassion and courage, so we ought 
to testify to immortality. Our race cannot do 
without this hope. Science has done great things 
for mankind and will do yet greater things. But 
to science there is a “thus far and no farther.” 
It can tell us nothing of life beyond. For the 
broken heart and the hungry soul it has no cure. 
Only in Jesus Christ is there the answer which 
man longs to hear; and outside of Christ, silence 
and darkness! 

Sometimes, when the way gets a little rough and 
steep, and heavy clouds hang over my road, and 
I grow weary and wonder just what it all means, 
I get an increase of faith by travelling back 
along memory’s path to the old home which stood 
on the brow of the hill above the winding river 
and facing the college where my minister-father 


AT LAST 189 


was a professor. The most precious recollections 
of that home are not those that center about the 
vast attic where I used to lie by the hour and 
pore over old numbers of the one pictorial maga- 
zine which came into our home, nor the cavernous 
cellar where with red-hot poker we used to bore 
the holes in our sleds, nor the drawing-room, 
scene of many a happy party, but the dining- 
room where family worship was held every morn- 
ing and evening. Once again I see the united 
family circle as father led us in worship. ‘That 
family circle is broken now, some in heaven and 
some onearth. But the benediction of that family 
altar will, I am sure, follow me through this life 
and up to the gates of heaven. There was a sen- 
tence with which father used to conclude his prayer, 
and with that petition I finish, for it sums up my 
own wish for myself and for others, “ May we all 
get home at last.” Yes, heaven is our home, our 
Father’s House. 

At the conclusion of his great theological treatise, 
The City of God, St. Augustine thus imagines the 
life of the redeemed: “ He shall be the end of 
our desires who shall be seen without end, loved 
without cloy, praised without weariness.” St. 
Paul sums it all up for us in his magnificent. 
climax, “ That God may be all in all.” There faith 
can rest, for we know that “‘ God is love.” 





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